referrers from the wordpress.com reader
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About two weeks ago the number of referrers my blog was receiving from the wordpress.com reader suddenly dropped by about 80%. Overall traffic appears to be unchanged or even up a little. Has there been some change in how this stat is calculated?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
Not that I’m aware of but I’ll tag this thread for a Staff follow-up. Please subscribe to the thread so you are notified when they respond and please be patient while waiting. -
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It’s possible that some of your posts didn’t end up in the reader. Please see this page of our FAQ for a list of potential reasons why your post is not displaying in the public tag results. One or more of these items is likely the cause of the issue you’re encountering:
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I am familiar with the “missing posts” advice. Because I am getting some referrals from the reader it would appear that my posts are not being excluded entirely. I very much doubt that if a single tag was excluded that it would cause the change that I am seeing. Before publishing each post I count the categories and tags and never exceed a total of 14.
This has been tested for me. Another logged in blogger can reach my blog via the reader. The hits show up in the total and for the posts accessed, but the referral hit count from the reader remains unchanged.
Yesterday I received 1578 hits, nothing to complain about and much better than average. Only 30 show as referrals from the reader. However, the post published that day received at least 140 likes before midnight. I know not everyone clicks through, but the ratios were different only two weeks ago.
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I’d say most people liked through the reader but didn’t click through. Perhaps you can send me some stats links of examples where you think it went wrong.
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When things were normal:
StatsAfter the drop:
StatsI am sure some people gave likes without clicking through to the post. In the past that appeared to be one in three who did not click through. If you are correct that changed overnight to 4 out of five not clicking through.
Another blogger reached my site by clicking in on the link in blogs I follow edit. She looked at several items and the count in referrals did not change, even for hours. I am fairly sure the total hits are correct, as are Top Posts and Pages. However, I believe referrals are not being classified as referrals
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As far as I see there is no outstanding issue regarding the stats on your blog.
There are two different ways to get to a full post view from the Reader, and they both count as a pageview for the blog:
1) Clicking the title of the post takes you to a full-post view in the Reader.
2) Clicking on “X more words” on a Reader post takes you to the post on the blog itself.
We define ‘pageview’ pretty strictly:
– A full post view in the Reader.
– A view of any page/post/index-page/tag-page/homepage on a blog/site.So while all of the things you mention indicate a user’s interaction or interest in a post, they count as a pageview only if they result in a pageview as defined above.
Here are a few frequently asked questions:
Is a remotely clicked share considered to be a page view stat?
If someone clicks on a link shared on Facebook and that leads to viewing a post on a blog, that is a pageview.
How about a remotely clicked reblog? Is it considered to be a page view stat?
Same. If they click through to the source blog of the reblog, then it’s a pageview. If they only view the reblog and don’t click, then at this time it’s currently not counted as a pageview on the source site.
When readers read only an excerpt of a blog post in the Reader and do not click into the blog it’s published on, which off site activity (see above) that they undertake constitutes creating a page view stat?
Counts of comments, likes, follows (regardless of whether they take place on the blog or in the Reader) are all available to the blogger, but they aren’t pageviews, so they aren’t counted as pageviews. A view of an excerpt also isn’t counted as a pageview by our strict definition, but we might count them as Reader views in the future.
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kardotim, you may have unlocked part of the mystery. My posts do not display as full posts in the reader. I am going to change that setting and see what happens.
-Ron
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