Help understanding the stats

bipock

Done a couple searches and can't quite find an answer so thought this might be the place to ask. If not, mods please feel free to move this where appropriate.

I'm curious as to what a "view" on the stats page is. Is this an indication that someone made a direct connection to my siteAND viewed the picture or simply that someone viewed a picture posted on my site via direct means or through another site where the picture is posted? Yesterday was around 1800 views, today 1600. Considerably higher than normal even though I did do a couple small shoots this weekend. I do see where about 75% of my traffic is coming from, but the other 25% seems to coming from an unidentifiable source, which seems extremely high.

Just trying to make sure that I am deciphering the info correctly.

TheOnlooker

bipock wrote: »

Done a couple searches and can't quite find an answer so thought this might be the place to ask. If not, mods please feel free to move this where appropriate.

I'm curious as to what a "view" on the stats page is. Is this an indication that someone made a direct connection to my siteAND viewed the picture or simply that someone viewed a picture posted on my site via direct means or through another site where the picture is posted? Yesterday was around 1800 views, today 1600. Considerably higher than normal even though I did do a couple small shoots this weekend. I do see where about 75% of my traffic is coming from, but the other 25% seems to coming from an unidentifiable source, which seems extremely high.

Just trying to make sure that I am deciphering the info correctly.

It looks like you have this pretty well figured out.

The "views" refer to image views. This will count for every size from Small to Original. So, if someone were to check out an image and view the Medium and Large sizes, you would get a total of 2 views from that one visit.

Along with that, if you have photos posted on a forum or blog, you would get views from there as well.

-KevinW
Support Hero

bipock

TheOnlooker wrote: »

It looks like you have this pretty well figured out.

The "views" refer to image views. This will count for every size from Small to Original. So, if someone were to check out an image and view the Medium and Large sizes, you would get a total of 2 views from that one visit.

Along with that, if you have photos posted on a forum or blog, you would get views from there as well.

-KevinW
Support Hero

Kevin, if they view a picture posted on a forum, do they have to click the picture and come over to the webpage for it to be counted as a "view" or is justing viewing it considered a view?

rainforest1155

No, if an embedded photo is viewed anywhere (including external pages, like blogs or forums), our stats count it. If the photo is linked to the gallery, clicking it would likely result in another view.

bipock

OK. I'll have to change how I'm posting pictures elsewhere then.

Pure Energy

I've read a few of these stats threads and now that I'm starting to look at how many people visit my site in relation to when I shoot, post, email any contacts, etc.; I am starting to get more curious regarding the stats provided by SmugMug.

I have quite a lot of views, I think too many considering many factors, and am wondering if my stats for a particular gallery/photo are being overstated because someone sees the randomized thumbnail created for the SmugMug search engine. If a gallery is public and searchable by the SmugMug search engine for all, does someone viewing that image on a general or refined search count as a view?

Does it count as three views if it shows up in "people," "galleries," and "photos and videos" on the same search?

Taking that further, what about an image search run thru Yahoo or Google? What about a site search on yahoo or google and up pops that tiny thumbnail beside my site in the first (I'm hoping) 10 slots?

rainforest1155

Thumbnails are not counted toward stats. We only count photos viewed in sizes above thumbnail size, starting with the small size up to original size.
Our stats don't care how a photo is viewed, so that would also include views from blogs, forums, search engines or any other site as long as the photo is loaded directly from SmugMug and not cached that other site (for example, blogs may be set save a local copy of external photos as to keep down the load times).

Pure Energy

Hmmmm.... so most of my photos found thru the SmugMug search engine here: http://www.smugmug.com/search/?searchWords=ferrari&searchType=global&x=0&y=0#i=0&q=+ (enter your own keywords) are showing up as 400x266 which is pretty darn close to the small size you speak of. You sure those aren't being counted in the stats?

But guess what, photos from my little point and shoot camera are showing up in that search engine as 400x300. I guess that means when someone sees them there, my stats go up. And with the highly annoying non-stop scrolling FB, Google crap, they may not even be viewing some of the images.

Oh wonderful. Can we look into reducing these sizes so they don't inflate my stats?

rainforest1155

Right, I didn't think of the new search. I'll see if I can get an answer on whether these count towards the stats or not.

Pure Energy

Any information to report on this subject yet:

Hmmmm.... so most of my photos found thru the SmugMug search engine here: http://www.smugmug.com/search/?searc...=0&y=0#i=0&q=+ (enter your own keywords) are showing up as 400x266 which is pretty darn close to the small size you speak of. You sure those aren't being counted in the stats?

But guess what, photos from my little point and shoot camera are showing up in that search engine as 400x300. I guess that means when someone sees them there, my stats go up. And with the highly annoying non-stop scrolling FB, Google crap, they may not even be viewing some of the images.

Oh wonderful. Can we look into reducing these sizes so they don't inflate my stats?

mbonocore

Pure Energy wrote: »

Any information to report on this subject yet:

Hmmmm.... so most of my photos found thru the SmugMug search engine here: http://www.smugmug.com/search/?searc...=0&y=0#i=0&q=+ (enter your own keywords) are showing up as 400x266 which is pretty darn close to the small size you speak of. You sure those aren't being counted in the stats?

But guess what, photos from my little point and shoot camera are showing up in that search engine as 400x300. I guess that means when someone sees them there, my stats go up. And with the highly annoying non-stop scrolling FB, Google crap, they may not even be viewing some of the images.

Oh wonderful. Can we look into reducing these sizes so they don't inflate my stats?

The photos from search results do indeed count in your stats. I have submitted this to our engineering team to update the code to eliminate the search results from your photo stats. I will keep you posted on the progress.

Michael