Traffic tanks again
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Our traffic, which is very uncannily steady, has dropped by 25% this week. The very same thing happened in early September when the Geo Tagging feature was added to the post editor. And this week it seems there have been changes every day in the Reader. We know nothing about how this could be possible but really tend to believe it is not a coincidence. Any one else having this issue?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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I’ll tag this thread for Staff to take a look at your stats. Please subscribe to the thread so you are notified when they respond and please be patient while waiting.
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Hi @toemailer,
I’ve checked out your stats, and I’m not seeing anything terribly out of the ordinary. I’m leaning to believe this is likely just typical fluctuations. Can you explain a bit more about why you think this is involving Reader? Have you had less traffic to your blog from the Reader than usual?
Best,
Jeremey
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Well, it seems that from what we can glean from the WordPress stats, our traffic from the US, Britain, Canada, and Australia has dropped suddenly by perhaps 25%. It happened at the same time that the Reader was undergoing changes. We know nothing about these things but do try to rationalize things, though maybe there is no rationale for traffic fluctuations, and wondered if those changes played a role.
Those countries combined make up about 65% of our traffic so a sudden drop is noticeable. And the rest of the countries seem to be staying the course.
We have no idea how much traffic we get from the Reader aside from the “likes” we get from followers.
But we felt that maybe people were not clicking through the Reader like they normally would while changes were being made?Thanks, Jeremey!
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Hi @toemailer!
The changes to the Reader should not have affected how users are clicking through to posts so I don’t think that is the cause. Further more, your WordPress.com “likes” seem to be relatively consistent with past trends. I think the stats drop is unrelated to Reader for now, but if this keeps continuing, definitely let us know!
Best,
Jeremey
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The changes to the Reader should not have affected how users are clicking through to posts so I don’t think that is the cause.
Are you kidding! If you aren’t, then I beg to differ.
The unintuitive popup in the Reader is a nightmare to use with the extra click to view on original site. Why should we have to click twice to see something we have subscribed to read?
There are no evident permalinked post titles direct to posts that we can click. Instead we have to have another blogger who is in the know tell us to click the timestamp on the bottom left corner to get to a blog without using the dreadful pop-up.
I could and on but that would simply be repeating the feedback already posted here > https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/reader-changed?replies=277
I know for a fact that others have done what I did. We went nuts with the Reader so we made the happiness choice by leaving it and setting up accounts on feedreader services. During that week or more many of us we did not visit as many blogs and comment on them and share links to theme thereby generating traffic as we did previously.
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There were also reports in the thread that Reader views were not being properly counted – blog owners said that they did their own testing
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Thanks for your replies!
Timethief: That’s what we meant, that somehow the Reader wasn’t being used, though still not sure exactly how that works because we thought reader views were not counted in any way. Maybe we need a time out too :)
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Thanks for your replies!
Timethief: That’s what we meant, that somehow the Reader wasn’t being used, though still not sure exactly how that works because we thought reader views were not counted in any way. Maybe we need a time out too :)
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I apologize for the misunderstanding. As everyone has pointed out, changes were made to the Reader. When attempting to click through from a Reader post to the individual blog, users will have to do one of the following:
1. Click the post then click “View Original” in the upper right-hand corner
2. Click the timestamp in the lower left-hand corner as @timethief notedAs @apeatling noted here, views in Reader do count towards blog views (assuming the viewer clicks to open the full blog view or clicks the timestamp to go to your blog).
@Toemailer, regarding your original question, it could be a case of fewer readers navigating to your blog or opening up the full blog view in Reader. In that case, the views would not be counted towards your blog stats. After reviewing your stat trends a bit more, this change in Reader visibility and function may have affected your overall numbers, but I don’t think it accounts for the entire 25% drop.
As you all know, we’re always open to feedback to help improve the Reader. So, if you have any suggestions for future improvements, you can post them here or you can post to the original thread that @timethief mentioned.
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Hi
My site name is http://livgudlife.wordpress.com/. Past 3 days traffic on my site has suddenly gone down. Usually whenever I post, minimum 10 bloggers view my posting but from past 3 days I have noticed I’m just getting 3 views per day. I know blogs are driven by interested viewers and there might be fluctuation. But I’m actually surprised because my network is quite large and I do expect average of 30 hits per day.Whats gone wrong?
The blog I need help with is livgudlife.wordpress.com.
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Hi @livegood,
It looks like your stats have rebounded today back towards normal levels. Please see my last response to @toemailer. This could be a similar situation although the stats appear to be rebounding.
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no no you have mistaken…i have pushed my traffic through my network. it is not the consistent traffic. Tomorrow you will see the real count it would have dropped again to 2-3 views. pls look into it.
Also help me how to check my own post in reader. I want to see how it looks in reader.
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@LiveGood To see your blog in the Reader, you will need to “follow” your blog. Steps to do that can be found here:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/following/#how-to-follow-new-blogs
After you follow your blog, it should appear in the Reader when you log-in to WordPress.com.
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ok, our traffic seems to be just systematically getting worse as each week goes by. Not buying that this is a normal fluctuation as November is shaping up to be our worst month in the last 13. Something happened.
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Hi @toemailer – As I said before, this decrease could be partially due to the changes being made with Reader. However, the stats page looks to be recording your visitors correctly and appropriately. There could be a variety of reasons for the decrease in traffic. We’re definitely open to hearing suggestions for the Reader. However, it doesn’t seem like the decrease in stats are due to a malfunction in stats reporting.
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