Statistics since upgrade

Ferguson

I've seen some discussion of this but nothing that seemed like a resolution. Was there?

Since the upgrade my statistics indicate I've become wildly more popular.

Possibilities that come to mind:

- My talents were discovered by the masses just as New Smugmug came on

- The new Smugmug is so much more beautiful than the old that they can't stay away

- Something is amiss in how view counts work (for example, perhaps thumbnails in collage count as photo views and thumbnails in the old did not? Pure speculation)

While I'm rooting for #1, the rational part of my mind tells me #3.

Has anyone else done a long term run of statistics and compared?

If yours looks like mine, does it correspond to the conversion time?

Did you switch to collage? Slideshows now where you didn't have them before? (I had a Javascript slideshow before on my home page, now the built in one).

PS. During August when I noticed this I assumed it was, frankly, me -- testing, converting, changing, etc. But I quit that some time ago and the trend is actually up. I am doing more sports than over the (non-active) summer, but that's why I went back to last year -- and clearly it's not a in-season, out-season thing, as I shot a lot of college sports up thru spring.

Ferguson

So is the quiet a sign no one else has unusual stats? That would be useful to know -- means I can pretend it is the first theory above.

beardedgit

Ferguson wrote: »

So is the quiet a sign no one else has unusual stats? That would be useful to know -- means I can pretend it is the first theory above.

Well, mine stats aren't showing the same post-migration fluctuations as yours, just a spike at the end of July which, I reckon, is due to folk viewing my holiday pics on SM and on my blog, because it ends before my migration.

Pre-migration the line was mainly between 10k and 20k, post-migration it's mainly between 20k and 30K. I suspect that's because most of my galleries are Collage Landscape. Although most of my pics on SM are embedded in my blog, I don't think that's a cause of the rise because my blog-stats are way down since August. FWIW, I have hardly any slideshows but I use a few badges in blogs and forums.

Here you go, pick the bones out of this lot:

1 year:


The spike:


Post-migration:

Ferguson

Well, you are up by a factor of 2, that's pretty significant. but you're right, no wild swings like I seem to be getting.

So you also think the college landscape images are counting as photos and (I assume?) smugmug style thumbnails do not?

beardedgit

Of course, it may be that the post-migration increase in hits on my site is due to the sheer number of times that DGinners, Heroes and SM gurus have been there in order to help fix stuff that either didn't work, or which did work but then, inexplicably, broke

Darter02

Here are my stats from Smugmug. I don't know how accurate the SM stats are, but I've confirmed an increase of viewers via both Google Stats and Statcounter. I use Collage Landscape for almost all my galleries.

Here's the stats from SM. I don't really use them as I can't view the visitors paths, and it doesn't block my own IP (as far as I know).



The larger spikes coincide when I opened new wedding galleries. Also a number of them coincide when my galleries were either liked on Facebook, or linked to in Reddit. I'm also being more proactive in blog posting, and sharing the posts via social media.

I've noticed my visitors are also viewing the site longer on average. I've a 64% increase in new visitors as well. So, yes, the new site seems to attract people more.

zacHer0

If you guys are using the Collage view that might be the answer. The "thumbnails" in collage are not actually thumbnails, but small images that count towards your stats.

Ferguson

zacHer0 wrote: »

If you guys are using the Collage view that might be the answer. The "thumbnails" in collage are not actually thumbnails, but small images that count towards your stats.

That's good to know, and yes I think that is likely the difference. Someone opens a gallery, doesn't (really) look at anything and goes to another gallery, and it might count as 40 or 80 images, depending on the size of their monitor. IN the past I assume (with Smugmug format) it counted as 1, the first image in the gallery. Also something of a mis-statement (as I suspect everyone learned that most popular image in a gallery is the first ), but less so.

Thanks for confirmation.

beardedgit

Well, looking at the other posters' graphs, I'm amazed that my current hits levels are so comparatively high. I'm not a pro, I share but don't sell, I don't do any social networking apart from running a 40-hits-on-an-average-day blog, I do nothing to enhance SEO and my pics are generally crap, yet I'm getting a much higher background-level of hits than the others. Mind you, I don't restrict access either... no passworded galleries, no RCP...

Hmm...

Are we sure that the scale up the left-side of the graphs is correct?

AperturePlus

Mine also went through the roof and I considered all three of your points as well.

Basically, the stats are now totally useless and Smugmug still have said nothing about how it plans to sort this out. It has been months.

Darter02

While I agree the smugmug stats are useless, they do sort of parallel what I see in Google Analytics (which has accurate numbers), and Statcounter (which has accurate visitor path information). The fact that Smugmug counts each appearance of an image, whether it's in a collage gallery, or embedded in a forum, or blog, boggles my mind a bit. I always wondered why the numbers where so inflated.