Inconsistent Statistics?

zubenelgenubi

Hi,

I am a little puzzled by the statistical data that new smugmug is showing me. Three days ago I posted a new gallery with some (not great) shots of a local fun run. The gallery is at http://zubenelgenubi.smugmug.com/Events/BeatingLudwigVan. Tonight, when in smugmug I go into:

account settings>stats>details>

it says my entire site has had a total of 31036 photo views so far for the month of April. If from there I go to:

account settings>stats>details>popularity

it says my newly-created fun run gallery has been the most popular gallery on my site during April, with a total of 37981 photo views. This is MORE than the previous screen's estimate of the total number of photo views for the whole site - which is obviously not sensible. If on this screen I then click on the "last month" link near the top right of the popularity screen, then the estimate of photo views for the fun run gallery drops to 22356 - which seems more consistent with the previous estimate of 31036 views for the whole site in April. I know that since this is mid-April then the "last month" period is not normally the same as just "April". But given that the fun run gallery is just three days old, this difference shouldn't matter here.

So I am confused. My guess is that estimates of photo views presented when I first enter the "popular galleries" is just wrong, presumably due to a bug. But may there is some different way of counting things in different screens that actually does makes sense, in some unexpected kind of way?

Any clarification would be appreciated!

- Mark Conde

rainforest1155

Hi Mark,

In an effort to keep the stats as close to real time as possible, different screens may take longer to compute than others. So if you notice differences in the totals, it is likely that the popularity screen has updated more recently while the total views may take longer.

If you wish to compare multiple screens, you can pick a date range that lies in the past, e.g. yesterday or by manually picking a date range with the end date set to yesterday. That should in most cases give you matching totals across the different screens. Of course, depending on the time of day and time zone you're in, you may still find some screens not matching exactly.

zubenelgenubi

Hi Sebastian,

Thanks for the reply and for the clarification that some discrepancy between the various statistics screens is to be expected. It may indeed be that some screens are more up-to-date than others.

But it sure looks to me like the first time I select the "popularity" tab the numbers are always unexpectedly inflated (by ten to thirty percent in some cases.)

That is, suppose I go into the "Total Views" tab and set my time period of interest to be "last month". If I then select the "popularity" tab I will see some numbers for each of my galleries. Then if, in that same "popularity" screen, I hit the "last month" selection again, the screen refreshes - but now with many of the counts being shown as SMALLER than they were when I first entered the "popularity" screen. Not all the galleries' numbers change - but many do, and those do that change always update to give smaller numbers.

In some cases the first estimate of the photo views (when I first enter the popularity screen) is much greater than the subsequent estimates after I refresh it. The difference is so great that it takes many hours of people viewing my photos before the refreshed (and, I presume, accurate) count of photo views reaches the value that was originally displayed when I first entered the popularity screen. So I don't think this behavior can be explained by more latency in one screen than in another.

Anyway, for now, my workaround is to only rely on statistics after I've refreshed them manually a couple of times.

- Mark Conde

rainforest1155 wrote: »

Hi Mark,

In an effort to keep the stats as close to real time as possible, different screens may take longer to compute than others. So if you notice differences in the totals, it is likely that the popularity screen has updated more recently while the total views may take longer.

If you wish to compare multiple screens, you can pick a date range that lies in the past, e.g. yesterday or by manually picking a date range with the end date set to yesterday. That should in most cases give you matching totals across the different screens. Of course, depending on the time of day and time zone you're in, you may still find some screens not matching exactly.

rainforest1155

The "last month" time frame still includes the current day, which is why you still may see fluctuations. You may therefore have to manually pick a date range by clicking on the date to bring up the calendar. That would allow you to pick a date range which excludes the current day, and therefore should in most cases exclude processing delay fluctuations.