Are spammers actually visiting the site to leave a spam comment/

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  debmcalister · Member · Sep 24, 2014 at 5:06 pm

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  Are people who leave spam comments reflected in my site traffic stats? Yesterday, for example, the site stats say ~300 page views happened on my page — and over 180 spam comments wound up in my spam folder (which I empty at least daily). Does this mean that only 120 real “site visitors” came to the site, while the rest of the traffic was spammers leaving their spam comments — or are the spammers using some kind of bot to post their nonsensical spam on the site?

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  thatrobyn · Member · Sep 25, 2014 at 4:51 pm

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  Hey Deb,

  This is a great question, but not one that can be given a precise answer. Depending on how people read your posts (ie. on your site, on the Reader, via email), they may or may not be reflected as hits. So, while it’s true spammers can indeed count as hits if they visited your site directly, you might have had many more real readers. Many subscribers prefer to read posts directly in the WordPress.com reader, for instance. Those are not counted as hits on your site, since your page is never actually visited by those folks.

  You may want to take all of that into account while studying your stats.

  Please let us know if you have any other questions. Thanks much!