Data With a Grain of Salt

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“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” – Albert Einstein

Talking with some blogging friends the other day, the topic of blog views came up. We were discussing all the different reasons that view numbers could be less this year than last year: people’s attention spans getting shorter, maybe viewers read more when the pandemic shut down other activities and now they are reading less, etc..

I’m too new to blogging to have enough historical data of significance, but I’ve studied similar data in my professional life to know that numbers aren’t as concrete as we think. So I did some digging and thought I’d share the results of my research specific to WordPress.

First of all – what is a view?

According to the WordPress stats and insights page it is:

“The two main units of traffic measurement are views and visitors:

  • A view is counted when a visitor loads or reloads a page.
  • A visitor is counted when we see a user or browser for the first time in a selected time frame.

A visitor is an individual looking at your site. A visitor can view many different pages of your site or view the same page multiple times. Therefore, the views number is typically higher than the visitors number.”

With those definitions in mind. Here are some things that impact the numbers.

  • If a viewer reads your content in the body of email notification and never clicks on any links within the email, it doesn’t count as a view.
  • If a viewer reads and/or likes your content in the WordPress viewer but does not click through to the full post, it does not count as a view.

One of the blogs that I write for has changed in the last few months so that when posts are emailed out, they no longer have a “like” link at the bottom, just the “comment” link. However posts that come from my blog still have both “like” and “comment” links at the bottom. Some posts are emailed out with just the summary and then something like “click here to read the full post.” For people who are reading blog posts in email like I do, those three differences are going to impact the number of views.

There are some things that WordPress makes a point not to count as a view – search engines and views from anyone that has logged in and who has authoring permissions. Generally speaking, there are trying to report how many views of the content by readers as accurately as they can.

The technology is constantly changing so things like a change in the format of the notifications by email or even how well the WP Reader performs on a mobile device can impact things like view numbers. Numbers as reported within a week are probably pretty accurate in relation to each other because the functionality is consistent. There are likely seasonal differences with dips in summer and holidays. Year over year numbers, comparing the same month this year to the same month last year, is very interesting data but needs to taken with a grain of salt.

If a blog has a drop in views, it’s possible that it’s because the author(s) has alienated the viewers or our collective attention span has gone to seed. But since the trend over time for active bloggers is towards more followers and views, it also might be worth considering these technical factors as well.

For those of you who are interested in more information on the many way people read blog posts from two incredibly talented writers and experienced bloggers, both Ashley and Claudette have covered the topics in depth and by survey here:

Ashley Peterson’s post on How Do You Read Blog Posts? on her Mental Health @ Home blog.

Claudette Labriola’s survey results of How Do You Read Blogs on her Writer of Words, Etc blog

(featured photo from Pexels)

26 thoughts on “Data With a Grain of Salt”

  1. Thanks for the mention! I’ve noticed that there seem to be natural ebbs and flows in terms of how active people are on WordPress. My WordPress Reader referrer numbers can vary significantly from month to month. For example, my Reader numbers for Feb ’22 were only a little over half my Reader numbers for Nov ’21. Que sera, sera.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Isn’t that fascinating? It makes me wonder about all the algorithms behind the scene that we (or at least I) have no idea about. Interesting comment, as always, Ashley. Thank you!

      Liked by 2 people

  2. Thank you for this, Wynne. Another interesting (?) statistical anomaly in the WordPress tabulation of “followers” is that those who are deceased continue to be listed. I suppose there is a manner of “afterlife” in this, but I imagine most hoped for something better!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Oh, I’m laughing about the afterlife! Yes, let’s hope we’ve moved on to better “platforms” after we pass! 🙂 That is an interesting anomaly – I had no idea.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Thanks Wynne
    I really did not know any of this and actually have not paid much attention to my statistics. I see the likes at the bottom of each post but know that a percentage may not have actually read the post. I guess I write to thrive more in the comments section. I do go through my “follower” list every couple of years and eliminate those who have not visited in the past year. I find out how transient people tend to be.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I agree with you, Gary. I like the comments as well and don’t pay much attention to the rest. But what an interesting idea you pose to go through and clean out the follower list. Thank you!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Interesting— I did not know that there is a way to see which followers have visited or not—or how to go about finding out! (Thanks Gary!) And why does my actual blog page show so so many more followers than my stat page? My eyes tend to glaze over when it comes to this sort of thing . . . Thank you Wynne for delving into this for all of us!

        Liked by 1 person

      2. What an interesting question, Julia. I wonder if the difference is between one being just WordPress followers and the other being WordPress plus email followers? If you send me a screen shot of what you are seeing on your home page and then also of the insights page from the statistics section to my email, I’d be happy to look into it for you!

        Liked by 1 person

  4. Interesting info, Wynne. What concerns me most right now is the increase in number of spam comments. This makes it time consuming for me to check for legitimate comments caught in the net, as occasionally happens.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. That’s unfortunate, Rosaliene. I did a quick search on that and one of the solutions I thought was interesting was to disable certain protocols (XML -RPC and REST API). Is that what you’ve done to block them? Or have you installed something like the Askimet anti-spam protocol and it’s catching legitimate comments?

      Liked by 1 person

  5. 🤔 You have given me something to think about, Wynne.

    In regards to views, I expect them to fluctuate (And, this of, course, will vary from blogger to blogger).

    In my case, blog posts that are based on blogging-related advice tend to get most of the incoming views.

    So, could this be a case of performance based on what types of blog posts we actually publish on our blogs?

    It may also have something to do with how often we publish content on our blogs. For example, the person who publishes content on their blog daily has the potential of exceeding the number of views of a person who publishes content on their blog weekly.

    Great topic, by the way!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. You have made some excellent points. I think you are right on! Building on what you’ve noticed about posts about blogging – maybe we are more universally interested in that subject since its a blogging platform as opposed to another? And I think you are right that someone that posts daily will get more views because they’ll be more opportunities for people to see their content in things like the WP Reader. Thanks for adding to the discussion!

      Liked by 1 person

  6. A very interesting look into the new metrics of the online world. I think you explained the difference between views and visits well. It’s all very fascinating.

    I enjoy looking at the WordPress dashboard to see which parts of the world people are visiting from. I ain’t gonna be retiring from my blog 😆, but it’s nice to think about the community your writing can reach.

    Enjoy your weekend!

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Thank you for your kind offer to check into my question, Wynne. Rather than put you to all that trouble, I’ll just assume that your assumption is correct—that one number of followers reflects WordPress followers only, and the other (the one on my actual blogs) are WordPress plus email, etc. There’s a pretty big discrepancy between the two, but theI truth is, I’m not sure that i really care all that much about it to figure it out! Bless you!!

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Rosaliene’s comment reminds me I need to check my spam filter. I rarely venture over there, and hardly ever find legitimate comments when I do. But the spam can be pretty entertaining, at least.

    Liked by 1 person

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