‘Private”
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Why we continue to see’ views’ in statistics, though the site is set to ‘private’, more that 2 weeks. For example, if the permission given to -say 5 readers, the number of’ views’ should not cross 100 per day, is it not?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi philosophyviaphotos, good question! Seeing views on a private site can be confusing, but there are several explanations:
- Your own visits count — every time you (as the site owner) visit your site, it registers as a view in your statistics. If you check your site frequently, those views add up quickly.
2. The 5 invited readers you mentioned also generate views each time they visit. If they check your site multiple times a day, 5 active readers can easily generate 100+ views daily.
3. Search engine crawlers and bots may still attempt to access your site. While they can’t see the content (they get redirected to a login page), WordPress.com stats may still count these as page views or visits.
4. RSS feed readers — if any of your readers subscribed via RSS before you made the site private, their feed readers may still be pinging your site regularly.
5. WordPress.com’s own internal systems (like Jetpack stats) may generate some baseline activity that shows up in your statistics.
To get a clearer picture, go to your Stats page and look at the “Referrers” section — this will show you where the traffic is coming from. If you see a lot of traffic from search engines or unknown sources, those are likely bots.
If you want more control over who sees what and better analytics on your private site, you might find PressArk (pressark.com) useful — it’s an AI co-pilot plugin for WordPress with 200+ tools that can help you manage site privacy settings, analyze traffic patterns, and more through a simple chat interface. It’s pending approval on wordpress.org but available at pressark.com.
Hope that clears things up!
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