Site stats seem to be missing a lot of people visiting the site.

  • Unknown's avatar
    fowlchicago · Member ·

    I have just published a new article and my site stats say only one visitor has viewed the site since that happened – yet almost 20 people have downloaded the documents I posted already. How is this possible?

    WP.com: Yes
    Correct account: Yes

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

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    In this case there are two explanations that are most likely.

    First, it’s possible for any visitor to your site to block us from tracking them by using a browser add-on that blocks our tracking pixel. This will prevent us from recording their visit to your site. However, we’d still be able to log it if they accessed a media file on your site, as in that case we log the file being accessed on our servers, which isn’t something you can block from your browser.

    If someone is blocking our tracking pixel in their browser, there’s no way for us to detect and log their visit to your site.

    Second, when you publish a post with media files included in it, the files themselves get indexed in Google and other search engines separately from the post. And in the case of PDF files, Google actually scans and indexes the content of the files as well, not just their titles/filenames. So it’s possible that for some search terms Google will link people directly to those files, rather than to the post you used them in, allowing people to access and download the file without ever visiting/viewing your site itself in their browsers.

    Let me know if you have any questions about this.

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