is it possible the "Clicks" stats are off?
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i’m having WWIII going on in the background in my living room right now with my extended family on opposing sides so i’m going to not sweat the stats right now (or ever, to the delight of many i’m sure).
i hadn’t meant to make a big deal of this; just wanted to know if others noticed it and knew what the deal was, so thanks to all who took the time to post responses… it’s all good…
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If you continue to give us links to pages that do not come up for us, we will never be able to help you.
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Mind you, the difficulty with those links might be the reason you’re not seeing the clicks you expect. You have to be able to format links correctly and give people links to places they can actually land. You keep giving us links to your dashboard that we can’t click through and your last link goes to a PAGE NOT FOUND. If you’re formatting the rest of your links like that, there’s your problem.
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Mea culpa: I thought that even if I made a post “private,” as long as I provided the URL, it would be viewable to anybody (like what you can do in YouTube).
The only thing that I wanted to show on those unviewable pages was the only item that came up on the “Clicks” stats was WordPress.com, which I don’t ever link to from any of my pages/posts.
So if you were to check out any of my pages/posts, you would find links to external, outbound sites, but I wasn’t sure if the “Click” stats reported those clicks.
If the earlier link I gave, specifically to you at: http://justonemoreclick.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/04-6b-once-upon-a-time-in-youtubeepisode-6b/, didn’t work, then yeah, that’s a problem.
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The links on that page work for me, but I’m with TT. The more you put in, the less incentive there is to click on any particular link. I once did a post with 36 links that took me over six hours to write, and hardly anyone clicks, but they DO hover to see the alt text and where the links to. I cannot imagine many people want to interrupt reading a narrative to go watch a YouTube. I think the problem in this case is the content.
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My point is that just because they’re not being counted where you can see them doesn’t mean they’re not being counted at the other end — where the link leads.
People use all sorts of privacy and anti-tracking/referral blocking utilities specifically to stop this sort of thing. They simply may not want you to know what they’re doing or clicking on.
I do much like RC suggests. I hover over a link sometimes, but rarely (if ever) click on a ink in any article. What I may do is copy and paste the link into another browser window, or even another browser; I usually have 3 running.
I don’t like being tracked and I don’t like sites counting my visits and clicks to try and make money off me.
Again, stats don’t mean squat. There are all kinds of ways to get around click-trackers, both active and passive.
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Following on from what notawoodpecker has said, the stats can never be accurate because people DO use ‘do not track’ options these days, and you could be having views that you know absolutely nothing about. And a lot of views are from spammers or content thieves anyway!! It makes watching stats all rather irrelevant. Genuine hits are usually quite low anyway.
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Good to hear all of this.
It does take a lot of time to find the links but I probably won’t stop doing it altogether–just less. It entertains me to find stuff plus I learn/enjoy new things that I thought I could share (or not) with viewers. I’ll finish up the episodic chapter 4 with the links galore, and then go back to “normal” posting.
Again, thanks for spending the time to tell me things I now know…
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To increase clicks, work on your alt text. Make it amusing and intriguing. right now you don’t have any. “goes to some freaking youtube” is all the info anyone can glean from your links.
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Hmmm…
I thought it was self-evident the links directly related to the text the links were found on. I’ll have to work on that in the future although I’m wrapping stuff up on that episodic chapter 4 so I may not have to deal with this sometime soon.
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Your alt text is the marketing for the links. Right now you are not giving them any reason to click.
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Ay, Caramba!
I didn’t know of such things (doh!)–I did some research and took your advice, adding the alt text to my lastest installation at: http://justonemoreclick.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/04-7b-once-upon-a-time-in-youtubeepisode-7b/?preview=true&preview_id=2003&preview_nonce=aae635bba9
I guess I’ll have to go back and rework the rest of the posts.
@raincoaster: Thanks for staying the course with me; you’re racking up karmic points, bigtime!
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Thanks. I need ’em.
PS don’t use Preview links in the forum. Only links to the actual published posts will work for us.
Take a look at the alt text on my linkblogging here: http://crasstalk.com/2011/06/bette-davis-has-bad-news-for-you-baby-and-gossip-links/
Yes, I used to be a professional linkblogger. Alt text works.
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Okay, obviously I need to step it up–not just to get more clicks but I need to have more fun here.
Thanks again, raincoaster…
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