Hi Ben,
I was wondering if you had anything on your mind about Google. I know we would all be interested.
-Message not received.
I do! As a matter of fact, I do! Thank you for not asking!
Google stats can be so much fun and I occasionally post something on them. Sometime in the last year or so, I marked the 100,000th pageview since July, 2009. I enjoyed that. However, gradually, Google stats have become less fun because they are not accurate; e.g. there were not 21 Finns here all at one time last week. I have noticed other things over the years that have made me suspicious and suspicious is not fun. For example, the "all-time" graph start date has changed repeatedly, from July, 2009 to sometime, I don't remember, in 2008, and now it's June, 2007! The graph skips entire months, it skips the entire year from May 2010-April 2011. How hard can it be simply to count? Exasperation really does not equal fun. Then, a year or so ago, I began noticing under "referring urls" and "referring sites," names I'd never heard of before. Google.com is the numero uno referring site but numero dos is something called "vampirestat." Wtf? In doing some research I learned wtf: vampirestat is not really referring anybody. All vampirestat does is send "bots" to a site. The bots artificially inflate the number of visitors. I learned this from a Google site. (I did not learn what is in it for vampirestats.) So, why does Google report those as real "visitors?" I don't know. It messes up other stats, like "pageviews by country." Google reports that Malaysia is sixth in pageviews by country, but I know, and Google knows, that that's b.s., the vast majority of those are not real pageviews, that's vampirestats. Vampirestats and like sites just disappeared a few months ago. I had planned on marking the 200,000th visitor and Google reports that the total--since when?--is 208,800 but I haven't because not all of that total are "real." I have added up all of the referrals from vampirestats and their ilk and it's something like 16,000 so I decided not to post that we had reached 200,000 until subtracting all the fake hits.
Then yesterday...Yesterday, someone clicked on one of the "stat" posts: http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2013/01/this-is-public-occurrences.html. I clicked on the post (I have a function that does not count my own clicks.). I thought that 1,066 pageviews of the "Jasmine Revolution" post was higher than it was now! I checked the current stats. At this moment Google reports that there have been 1,008 clicks on "Jasmine Revolution," fifty-eight less than fifteen months ago. How hard can it be simply to count? So, I am considering deleting the "widget" that reports out the ten most "popular posts," because something is not right. I have just lost faith in Google stats.
I was wondering if you had anything on your mind about Google. I know we would all be interested.
-Message not received.
I do! As a matter of fact, I do! Thank you for not asking!
Google stats can be so much fun and I occasionally post something on them. Sometime in the last year or so, I marked the 100,000th pageview since July, 2009. I enjoyed that. However, gradually, Google stats have become less fun because they are not accurate; e.g. there were not 21 Finns here all at one time last week. I have noticed other things over the years that have made me suspicious and suspicious is not fun. For example, the "all-time" graph start date has changed repeatedly, from July, 2009 to sometime, I don't remember, in 2008, and now it's June, 2007! The graph skips entire months, it skips the entire year from May 2010-April 2011. How hard can it be simply to count? Exasperation really does not equal fun. Then, a year or so ago, I began noticing under "referring urls" and "referring sites," names I'd never heard of before. Google.com is the numero uno referring site but numero dos is something called "vampirestat." Wtf? In doing some research I learned wtf: vampirestat is not really referring anybody. All vampirestat does is send "bots" to a site. The bots artificially inflate the number of visitors. I learned this from a Google site. (I did not learn what is in it for vampirestats.) So, why does Google report those as real "visitors?" I don't know. It messes up other stats, like "pageviews by country." Google reports that Malaysia is sixth in pageviews by country, but I know, and Google knows, that that's b.s., the vast majority of those are not real pageviews, that's vampirestats. Vampirestats and like sites just disappeared a few months ago. I had planned on marking the 200,000th visitor and Google reports that the total--since when?--is 208,800 but I haven't because not all of that total are "real." I have added up all of the referrals from vampirestats and their ilk and it's something like 16,000 so I decided not to post that we had reached 200,000 until subtracting all the fake hits.
Then yesterday...Yesterday, someone clicked on one of the "stat" posts: http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2013/01/this-is-public-occurrences.html. I clicked on the post (I have a function that does not count my own clicks.). I thought that 1,066 pageviews of the "Jasmine Revolution" post was higher than it was now! I checked the current stats. At this moment Google reports that there have been 1,008 clicks on "Jasmine Revolution," fifty-eight less than fifteen months ago. How hard can it be simply to count? So, I am considering deleting the "widget" that reports out the ten most "popular posts," because something is not right. I have just lost faith in Google stats.
