Set site to private, still lots of views
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Like many others, I’d experienced a huge unusual surge in views late last year which seemed to be down to crawl bots. Lots of forum threads on that topic. I only have a Personal Plan as my blog is very small & just a hobby, so I was limited in ways to tackle the bots. That seemed to eventually resolve itself but this year I’ve had another unusual increase in views, most from the USA (I’ve read on the forum others have experienced this too) but also single views from lots of random countries. Assuming it was bots again, I switched my blog to private to wait it out but I’m still getting views on lots of my posts from different countries. I believe that anyone with their own WP site & logged in could possibly still access mine if they already had one of my pages open, but the views don’t make sense. They’re not my own visits either. I’ve not posted anything for ages, my view numbers are always very small, usually zero! If it is bots, how can they access my site if it’s set to private? Can anyone explain what’s going on?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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The persistent view counts on your site after switching to private are likely “ghost” hits caused by automated bots, RSS readers, or email subscribers attempting to access your content via old, cached links. While the privacy setting successfully prevents anyone from actually reading your posts, the WordPress stats engine sometimes logs the initial connection attempt before the server-side block fully terminates the session. This is common during the “USA bot surges” you’ve noted, as these scripts are programmed to repeatedly “ping” saved URLs from various global data centers; even if they only receive a login screen or a “403 Forbidden” error, that single interaction can register as a hit in your dashboard.
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Hi there, everyone!
Thanks to @james3265166 for jumping in with a helpful reply. It is great to see our community supporting each other!
While bots and automated scripts can sometimes inflate view counts on public sites, they would not be able to get past your privacy settings here. Bots are not authenticated WordPress.com users, so your private site would simply turn them away.
The single views you are seeing are most likely coming from logged-in WordPress.com users who have access to your Lockwood Echosite website. This is actually expected behaviour on our end. Stats on private sites reflect your own visits as well as visits from any other users who have been granted access, or who may have had a page open from before you switched to private.
So the good news is that this is not something to worry about. Your content is protected, and what you are seeing in your stats is just normal logged-in traffic rather than bots slipping through.
Hope this offers some peace of mind, and we’ll be just a message away if you’d like to go over anything else together.
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Hi. Thankyou for the reassurance. I know the visits aren’t me, it was just a surprise to see so many still after I went private. It is tailing off, a very small number last couple of days. I’ll set it to public again & see what I get. Thankyou again.
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Hi there! 👋
Thanks for your patience — I can confirm your site is still set to private, and I can explain what’s going on with those view counts.
The key thing is that stats work differently on private sites compared to public ones:
- On a public site, your own logged-in visits are automatically excluded from stats.
- On a private site, your own logged-in visits are counted — including when you check your dashboard, preview posts, or browse your site.
Additionally, your site has a couple hundred subscribers. Any subscribers who have access to your private site will also have their views counted in your stats when they visit — and those visitors could be from anywhere in the world, which would explain the different countries you’re seeing.
Since your site is private, bots cannot access it — they’d hit the login wall, and the tracking pixel that records stats would never load. So this isn’t a security or privacy concern at all.
How to stop your own views from appearing in stats while staying private:
Your Personal Plan supports plugins and hosting features, which gives you access to the Jetpack Stats settings where you can exclude your own views. Here’s how:
- First, if you haven’t already, activate hosting features for your site here: https://wordpress.com/hosting-config/
- Go to your site’s WP Admin dashboard.
- Navigate to Jetpack → Settings.
- Click the Traffic tab.
- Scroll to the Jetpack Stats section and expand it.
- Under “Count logged in page views from”, toggle off Administrator (and any other roles you want to exclude).
This will exclude your own views, though views from subscribers with access to your private site will still be counted.
Alternatively, if you switch your site back to public, your logged-in admin views will be excluded automatically — no extra steps needed.
Here are some helpful resources:
- How traffic is counted (including private vs public site differences): https://wordpress.com/support/stats/understand-your-sites-traffic/
- Jetpack Stats overview: https://wordpress.com/support/stats/
- Configure Jetpack Stats settings: https://jetpack.com/support/jetpack-stats/configure-jetpack-stats/
- Make your website private: https://wordpress.com/support/privacy-settings/make-your-website-private/
- View subscriber stats: https://wordpress.com/support/stats/view-subscriber-stats/
Hope that clears things up! Let us know if you have any other questions.
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