Thanks for the update and explanation ... BUT
how can counting a pre-fetched BUT NOT VIEWED image be good for anyone?
The statistics become meaningless - I want to know which photos have actually been viewed by my visitors, and which galleries have been viewed the most.
I haven't bothered to go back into my Account > Statistics since these changes. I used to use them 5 - 10 times per week.
I also removed three slideshows that I had because I was utterly sick of seeing thousands of meaningless "hits" of these images.
I have no idea what information I can get out of your new statistics.
Counting slideshow images and counting pre-fetched images just destroys any credibility the stats might have had
For example: I use the Stats and I see image_xyz has had 50 hits
Now how do I interpret that?
Is it 50 views of a slideshow is it 50 pre-fetched views without the image having been selected? or 50 pre-fetched views with some of them actually being visitors clicking on the image, is it ME looking at them ...
OR most likely, is it some combination of them all? I just don't know what that combination is.
Whatever it is, there is just simply NO WAY of me knowing how many of those 50 hits were from a visitor clicking on that image and looking at it.
I am truly gobsmacked that Smugmug thought this would be OK. The way it is at the moment, you might as well close down the Statistics section and save your money, because the information is a fabrication of the truth about visitor behaviour.
I have Statcounter but doesn't give me the information that Smugmug's statistics once did ie which galleries have been visited most often and which photos have been viewed most often (actual visitor behaviour)
Look I really, really like Smugmug ... but this is a fair kick in the guts.
Either produce statistics that are VALID or just get rid of them altogether because:
1) most of your customers don't use the facility, and
2) for the people who DO use them, they are just misleading/false at the moment.
So pi$$ off a few thousand people but save yourself a $million
My opinion does not necessarily make it true. What you do with my opinion is entirely up to you. www.acecootephotography.com
Eh sorry... but did you get millions of emails saying that those users are happy with the change? If not, why do you think they are happy and not just being too lazy to write to the helpdesk?
And by the way... it's not only after "done" on uploading... if i manually sort the gallery, go back to check the new sorting, back to organizer to make some more changes... especially on the collage styles this should generate lots of prefetch views.
With the new photo editor i started to use the gallery to edit title+captions which also causes lots of prefetches. With the new stats i was looking for another method and ended up using my photo software which also has a meta title editor that will fit into title+captions after upload. Less own views of my gallery also. I never used the meta title editor in my software, i do it now just because of all these new features on smug.
So you may improve the delivery speed but you also make people doing some changes to their workflow. And i'm sure not all are writing to the helpdesk. So don't count these as "happy users..."
Just my 2ct...
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BaldyRegistered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 2,853moderator
Look I really, really like Smugmug ... but this is a fair kick in the guts.
Either produce statistics that are VALID or just get rid of them altogether because:
1) most of your customers don't use the facility, and
2) for the people who DO use them, they are just misleading/false at the moment.
So pi$$ off a few thousand people but save yourself a $million
That sounds pretty sensible and we've been thinking about it. It doesn't sound like the work we're doing now to exclude owner views would satisfy, because we'd still have to chase down all the ways views leak out of unlisted galleries, like cover images, using an image to brand your shopping cart, etc. And some people really want slideshow images to count so they can see if people are viewing the slideshow to the end, some don't.
Stats were conceived way back when SmugMug was simpler, without all the gallery styles. And we provide integration with Google Analytics. Other companies like facebook have been smart about other measures of engagement, like comments and likes instead of views, and definitely not views of various sizes.
It feels like we need a re-think instead of trying to nurse an ever-more complex and expensive system that isn't getting used much.
Eh sorry... but did you get millions of emails saying that those users are happy with the change? If not, why do you think they are happy and not just being too lazy to write to the helpdesk?
And by the way... it's not only after "done" on uploading... if i manually sort the gallery, go back to check the new sorting, back to organizer to make some more changes... especially on the collage styles this should generate lots of prefetch views.
With the new photo editor i started to use the gallery to edit title+captions which also causes lots of prefetches. With the new stats i was looking for another method and ended up using my photo software which also has a meta title editor that will fit into title+captions after upload. Less own views of my gallery also. I never used the meta title editor in my software, i do it now just because of all these new features on smug.
So you may improve the delivery speed but you also make people doing some changes to their workflow. And i'm sure not all are writing to the helpdesk. So don't count these as "happy users..."
Just my 2ct...
Hi phaserbeam,
Customers rarely post or email when they're happy, which is fine, no worries from us, so pretty much all web companies like us have gone to other ways to monitor customer satisfaction, like instrumenting our systems to monitor engagement, abandonment, etc. It's pretty clear from every indicator we have that speed ranks right up there with good photos and good presentation for engagement.
I just looked at more data wrt to how many people use stats, and first of all, I was mistaken when I reported less than a thousand have looked at them. It's still a small % of our customers, but it's a much bigger number than I thought and reported in my earlier post. I'm sorry for the error. Second, the people who are engaged are seriously engaged, checking stats hundreds of times a month.
So where we are now is focused on eliminating user views again if we can without compromising performance.
Just thinking out of the box but don't actual photo views come with a browser link change? Not what just
happens to show up on a page?
- open in LB
- click thumb in SM style gallery
I would think anything a visitor clicks on purpose to view a photo not just browsing a bunch.
Even clicking to another gallery or opening a gallery could be tracked.
Just thinking out of the box but don't actual photo views come with a browser link change? Not what just
happens to show up on a page?
- open in LB
- click thumb in SM style gallery
I would think anything a visitor clicks on purpose to view a photo not just browsing a bunch.
Even clicking to another gallery or opening a gallery could be tracked.
BTW, I use StatCounter and it tracks every click like this. But doesn't compile stats.
Yeah it seems like loading the actual image file is the wrong thing to be tracking. Why not send a post to the server upon each lightbox photo view, and track that instead? You could do a bunch of buffering to reduce the amount of stat collect traffic sent to the server, and it would be trivial to exclude the owner's views on the client side.
That can even be integrated into Google Analytics' event tracking I believe.
What I think stats are for is to track visitor clicks. Browsing/scrolling through a bunch of photos means nothing.
Click thumb in SM style, click to LB, click to different size, click to cart, click to folder/gallery.
All these show as browser url changes.
Perhaps even clicking "like". Might show what photos are "liked". Really missing this.
I don't really care what else is on a page, only what visitors look at "purposely".
Edit: advancing thru photos in lightbox or SM style might also be considered "purposely".
Eh sorry... but did you get millions of emails saying that those users are happy with the change? If not, why do you think they are happy and not just being too lazy to write to the helpdesk?
On top of what Baldy said, most people don't track actual speed of websites. It's more of a subconcious tracking. You clicked on the photo and boom, there it was. No waiting, instant satisfaction. Most people don't see this on websites and instantly think to write the company and praise them for the speed, but subconsciously, it makes a much smoother browsing experience for you and your customers.
... it makes a much smoother browsing experience for you and your customers.
That is OK... fast is always good, and faster is better. But as AceCo55 said
for the people who DO use them, they are just misleading/false at the moment.
I opened a few collage landscape galleries yesterday, and just scrolled down to the end, i did not open any photo (and sometimes i had to wait until the thumbs got loaded...). And now i have 5000 views (while being logged in!). And if i go to the stats especially to the details i can see that all of the galleries i tried have nearly 100% of included images being "viewed".
I think i have to search for alternatives for the stats. I did that yesterday and figured out that google analytics show me photos opened in lightbox. OK, not with a human readable filenames but at least i can open the viewed photo with a single click and can see which one is viewed that much.
I never used google for that, i just have an account for another website, and i find google more confusing then the SM-stats, but at least it does not count prefetched images.
I think i'm done with the SM-stats, i simply replace the link in my browser with a link to google analytics.
It feels like we need a re-think instead of trying to nurse an ever-more complex and expensive system that isn't getting used much.
Music to my ears Baldy.
What I need is a commitment to creating stats that truly reflect visitor clicks/behavior ... and I appreciate your willingness to investigate this.
I also appreciate the input from Allen and Nick.
Some people say the forum is just a place to complain - I don't agree with that. People here will highlight what they perceive as a problem in order to convince Smugmug that a change needs to be made. Once Smugmug agrees that it is worth looking into, Smuggers with extensive knowledge and skills will offer suggestions about how this might occur.
This is a HUGE strength of Smugmug - especially when someone like Baldy takes the time to provide his perspective.
Whilst the stats are useless to me at the moment, I am excited about what might be developed in the future. I definitely would not be looking elsewhere. Thank you.
My opinion does not necessarily make it true. What you do with my opinion is entirely up to you. www.acecootephotography.com
I just tripped over the stats issue when I noticed that my stats on a recent gallery were strange, to say the least.
As a casual, infrequent, hobbyist user I know my value to Smugmug is low. But is sounds like every vote counts, even little ones. So please add my small voice to the fray.
The current stats are useless. We need and want to know what things our audience CHOOSES to look at, not what a browser or server chooses to "pre-fetch". And not what we look at ourselves when uploading, testing, reviewing.
Good stats are very valuable, and valuable to a large enough user base to justify the cost to make them good. SmugMug stats are not a luxury, they are an essential part of the service.
Sounds like the SmugMug engineers have programmed themselves into a corner, with no easy way out. That's unfortunate, but finding a way out is necessary, and unavoidable. The longer it takes, the more stress and embarrassment it puts on the staff.
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BaldyRegistered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 2,853moderator
I just tripped over the stats issue when I noticed that my stats on a recent gallery were strange, to say the least.
As a casual, infrequent, hobbyist user I know my value to Smugmug is low. But is sounds like every vote counts, even little ones. So please add my small voice to the fray.
The current stats are useless. We need and want to know what things our audience CHOOSES to look at, not what a browser or server chooses to "pre-fetch". And not what we look at ourselves when uploading, testing, reviewing.
Good stats are very valuable, and valuable to a large enough user base to justify the cost to make them good. SmugMug stats are not a luxury, they are an essential part of the service.
Sounds like the SmugMug engineers have programmed themselves into a corner, with no easy way out. That's unfortunate, but finding a way out is necessary, and unavoidable. The longer it takes, the more stress and embarrassment it puts on the staff.
Well I think what we can do in the short-ish term is lose the pre-fetch counting and lose owner views, assuming we can do it without harming speed much.
I feel like if we fix those two things, then we can re-think the bigger picture, no?
Well I think what we can do in the short-ish term is lose the pre-fetch counting and lose owner views, assuming we can do it without harming speed much.
I feel like if we fix those two things, then we can re-think the bigger picture, no?
As far as the bigger picture goes, how about more in-depth page view, visitor info, and referrer stats? Any reason you guys couldn't be doing everything statcounter does, but even more accurately? I've never found the smugmug stats to be very useful because counting image views doesn't give a very complete picture of how my site is being used. I imagine you guys have all the data already... it's a matter of processing and displaying it which is no small task.
A simple upgrade would be not just showing referring sites, but showing what picture was displayed on the referring site. It's nice to see I got 82 hits from google in the past month, but I can't tell what images they were, where the viewers were from, what they were searching for, or any useful information at all. Statcounter can give me a lot of that kind of info, but smugmug should be able to do it much better... including info for photos viewed on external sites and accurate page view stats for smugmug sites.
I don't have any public galleries. I noticed that several of my older, unlisted, private and 'only me' galleries had lots of views over the past few months. At first I thought old customers were viewing the galleries but when private galleries that I haven't viewed in ages and that I've never shared started racking up stats, I became very concerned. I changed my password but it seems the problem is beyond my control.
My galleries are private for a reason. I have no idea who or what is looking at and possibly sharing my private images. I haven't viewed most of my older galleries recently but stats for the past month, week and day makes me think someone, not something is browsing my galleries because galleries with women, bodypainting and/or nudes are getting lots more hits than my sunsets.
This is the second major security flaw I've come across on smugmug. Coupled with the loss of other features I liked, it's the straw that broke the camel's back. I'm not renewing my account. For the cost of a pro account, I can buy plenty of secure storage for my images elsewhere.
It appears that pre-fetches and owner views are still being counted. I guess we are still in the "short-ish term".
So I'm wondering if we can get a useful approximation of true user views from the 7 different sizes in the stats table.
If I want to ignore pre-fetches and thumbnails (on gallery pages) can I do that?
What size is fetched by a pre-fetch?
What size is counted for a thumbnail in a gallery view, collage landscape for example?
And a separate question:
In testing, I removed the StatCounter code from my footer. But StatCounter kept racking up hits anyway. I looked at the page source for several pages and saw some StatCounter code was still there. What's that all about?
I am one of the hundreds and not one of the millions and am also in the minority since I loved my undergrad and graduate statistic classes. My first question would be, why would Smugmug “invest over a million dollars a year collecting, storing and displaying stats” if it is only being viewed by 1,000 people like me? That means that you have invested $1,000 so that I can view stats. While I appreciate that, I think there would need to be more to it for a business to invest that much money for such a few number of people. Especially for statistics that really don’t give the user any true information.
In the past I had been able to check the views that had been made to get an idea of what a client was looking at and at times get a bit of a ‘jump start’ on finishing images viewed in that gallery. That no longer happens. I also used it to arrange and rearrange folders based on views and to see what affect the location of a folder might have on views. That no longer happens. I also used it to judge the traffic a folder would have when it came to an event. That no longer happens. I assume that this is progress and I have to deal with it.
As for how views are counted, I have read what has been written and as a person who likes math and math problems, I don’t understand what is being counted or how. Today I have had two galleries that have each had 131 views of the same image, two galleries with 121 views of the same image, one folder with 120 views of the same image, one folder with 119 views of the same image, three galleries with 118 views of the same image, four folders with 117 views of the same image, one gallery with 116 views of the same image, two folders and one gallery with 115 views of the same image, two folders with 114 views of the same image, one folder and one gallery with 113 views of the same image, one gallery with 109 views of the same image, one folder and one gallery with 108 views of the same image, even one gallery that I was credited with three views of each image for opening it and changing it to an “unlisted” gallery. I could understand 1 view, but I only opened it change the settings, and this was done on a computer that should have already had them counted. I had one gallery that had 37,331 views today and 9,163 yesterday (after the upload at 10:00 p.m.), but since I was on my Smugmug site twice yesterday after the upload and several times today was I counted as a view of every image there without opening the gallery? Or maybe since I did the upload I was counted as three views of every image yesterday. I am sorry, but for me this kind of math just does not add up and quite frankly is useless.
I do enjoy many things about my Smugmug account but the title statistics for what is there is a stretch of someone’s imagination. My suggestion is that if it can’t be done accurately, remove it.
Well, I wish that someone can explain today's "What in the world?" I had a gallery that I opened and changed the gallery setting to 'Unlisted'. That was all I did, clicked on the gallery and went to settings and changed it to unlisted. Tonight it has a total of 145 views of the images there. All but two of the images now have 8 views. The other two are 6 views and 3 views. After changing the setting I have not opened the gallery. If all of the images would have had 8 views I would just assume that my opening the gallery chalked up 8 views. But with two having different numbers it is just needs some explanation from someone at Smugmug.
And the answer to that will be "We're asking an engineer to look into this. I'm passing the information you've provided along to him. Thanks for providing it. We'll get to the bottom of this just as soon as we possibly can."
It's easy to rack up a ton of views just by yourself - each "thumbnail" image shown in the modern gallery styles counts as a view (anything Small size and larger). If you happen to load Collage Landscape and resize your browser, you'll see the browser refetch a whole bunch of the photos to get new image sizes. 145 views from one person doing little to nothing in the gallery is by no means unusual by my reckoning.
8 views per image sounds like an unusual amount though, I would only expect it to be that high if your browser decided to refresh and refetch everything.
EDIT: Oh yup, changing the gallery to Unlisted causes the address of all the images to change, so your browser will load them all over again and cause another wave of counted image views.
I've noticed that the statistics page now has this message "We now track all views of your photos, including your own. Learn more about your stats." with a link to a page that explains how views are counted. It really doesn't matter how good the explanation is if the end result is useless gibberish instead of reliable and useful data. I add my voice to the comments above. The view stats as they are now are totally useless.
This entire topic depresses me. As a avid amateur, I derive great pleasure from looking though my stats--and I've used them in the past to refine my own skills (because I could see which photos prompted audience response). Now I discover that the stats are meaningless because they are so enormously impacted by my own activity of refining my gallery and my captions. Ugh!
I would like to be able to easily see at least two things: 1. I'd like to know how many people visit (and scroll through) a given gallery. I use collage landscape and journal styles to tell stories about a significant event or trip--and I do want to know if I've had visitors who have scrolled through, looking at the photographs and reading the captions. That activity does not require clicking on individual photos. And, 2. I'd like to know which photos are clicked open into lightbox, and how often this occurs. This can give me information regarding which photographs are most intriguing to my audience.
And I'd like all of this to be unaffected by any activity I conduct while logged in to my account.
Inability to access the number of views of individual recipients
Hi
Did these changes also eliminate the ability of a member to see if a particular recipient had looked at the photos, and, if so, how often? I used to be able to do that, but the function seems to be gone.
Does the pre-loading of images inflate the counts shown in referrer stats? I'm trying to get a handle on the impact of the blogspot pirate and can't tell how to interpret the numbers. Sorry if this has already been addressed, but searching came up empty.
Does the pre-loading of images inflate the counts shown in referrer stats? I'm trying to get a handle on the impact of the blogspot pirate and can't tell how to interpret the numbers. Sorry if this has already been addressed, but searching came up empty.
From posts #45, it sounds like it does.
Moderator Journeys/Sports/Big Picture :: Need some help with dgrin?
This entire topic depresses me. As a avid amateur, I derive great pleasure from looking though my stats--and I've used them in the past to refine my own skills (because I could see which photos prompted audience response). Now I discover that the stats are meaningless because they are so enormously impacted by my own activity of refining my gallery and my captions. Ugh!....And I'd like all of this to be unaffected by any activity I conduct while logged in to my account.
Is this possible? Please?
Fully agree!
Acadiana Al
Smugmug: Bayou Oaks Studio
Blog: Journey to the Light
"Serendipity...the faculty of making happy, unexpected discoveries by accident." .... Horace Walpole, 1754 (perhaps that 'lucky shot' wasn't really luck at all!)
I just tripped over the stats issue when I noticed that my stats on a recent gallery were strange, to say the least.
As a casual, infrequent, hobbyist user I know my value to Smugmug is low. But is sounds like every vote counts, even little ones. So please add my small voice to the fray.
The current stats are useless. We need and want to know what things our audience CHOOSES to look at, not what a browser or server chooses to "pre-fetch". And not what we look at ourselves when uploading, testing, reviewing...
Yes, agree.
Acadiana Al
Smugmug: Bayou Oaks Studio
Blog: Journey to the Light
"Serendipity...the faculty of making happy, unexpected discoveries by accident." .... Horace Walpole, 1754 (perhaps that 'lucky shot' wasn't really luck at all!)
I just noticed over the weekend that my google analytics numbers spiked up. I did some poking around and some site in Samara Oblast (Russia) is sending me referrals. I've now blocked the site from being counted by Google analytics but wonder if this is a more serious problem.
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how can counting a pre-fetched BUT NOT VIEWED image be good for anyone?
The statistics become meaningless - I want to know which photos have actually been viewed by my visitors, and which galleries have been viewed the most.
I haven't bothered to go back into my Account > Statistics since these changes. I used to use them 5 - 10 times per week.
I also removed three slideshows that I had because I was utterly sick of seeing thousands of meaningless "hits" of these images.
I have no idea what information I can get out of your new statistics.
Counting slideshow images and counting pre-fetched images just destroys any credibility the stats might have had
For example: I use the Stats and I see image_xyz has had 50 hits
Now how do I interpret that?
Is it 50 views of a slideshow is it 50 pre-fetched views without the image having been selected? or 50 pre-fetched views with some of them actually being visitors clicking on the image, is it ME looking at them ...
OR most likely, is it some combination of them all? I just don't know what that combination is.
Whatever it is, there is just simply NO WAY of me knowing how many of those 50 hits were from a visitor clicking on that image and looking at it.
I am truly gobsmacked that Smugmug thought this would be OK. The way it is at the moment, you might as well close down the Statistics section and save your money, because the information is a fabrication of the truth about visitor behaviour.
I have Statcounter but doesn't give me the information that Smugmug's statistics once did ie which galleries have been visited most often and which photos have been viewed most often (actual visitor behaviour)
Look I really, really like Smugmug ... but this is a fair kick in the guts.
Either produce statistics that are VALID or just get rid of them altogether because:
1) most of your customers don't use the facility, and
2) for the people who DO use them, they are just misleading/false at the moment.
So pi$$ off a few thousand people but save yourself a $million
www.acecootephotography.com
Eh sorry... but did you get millions of emails saying that those users are happy with the change? If not, why do you think they are happy and not just being too lazy to write to the helpdesk?
And by the way... it's not only after "done" on uploading... if i manually sort the gallery, go back to check the new sorting, back to organizer to make some more changes... especially on the collage styles this should generate lots of prefetch views.
With the new photo editor i started to use the gallery to edit title+captions which also causes lots of prefetches. With the new stats i was looking for another method and ended up using my photo software which also has a meta title editor that will fit into title+captions after upload. Less own views of my gallery also. I never used the meta title editor in my software, i do it now just because of all these new features on smug.
So you may improve the delivery speed but you also make people doing some changes to their workflow. And i'm sure not all are writing to the helpdesk. So don't count these as "happy users..."
Just my 2ct...
Stats were conceived way back when SmugMug was simpler, without all the gallery styles. And we provide integration with Google Analytics. Other companies like facebook have been smart about other measures of engagement, like comments and likes instead of views, and definitely not views of various sizes.
It feels like we need a re-think instead of trying to nurse an ever-more complex and expensive system that isn't getting used much.
Customers rarely post or email when they're happy, which is fine, no worries from us, so pretty much all web companies like us have gone to other ways to monitor customer satisfaction, like instrumenting our systems to monitor engagement, abandonment, etc. It's pretty clear from every indicator we have that speed ranks right up there with good photos and good presentation for engagement.
I just looked at more data wrt to how many people use stats, and first of all, I was mistaken when I reported less than a thousand have looked at them. It's still a small % of our customers, but it's a much bigger number than I thought and reported in my earlier post. I'm sorry for the error. Second, the people who are engaged are seriously engaged, checking stats hundreds of times a month.
So where we are now is focused on eliminating user views again if we can without compromising performance.
happens to show up on a page?
- open in LB
- click thumb in SM style gallery
I would think anything a visitor clicks on purpose to view a photo not just browsing a bunch.
Even clicking to another gallery or opening a gallery could be tracked.
My Website index | My Blog
My Website index | My Blog
That can even be integrated into Google Analytics' event tracking I believe.
Please check out my gallery of customisations for the New SmugMug, more to come!
Click thumb in SM style, click to LB, click to different size, click to cart, click to folder/gallery.
All these show as browser url changes.
Perhaps even clicking "like". Might show what photos are "liked". Really missing this.
I don't really care what else is on a page, only what visitors look at "purposely".
Edit: advancing thru photos in lightbox or SM style might also be considered "purposely".
My Website index | My Blog
Yes, one would assume they are purposeful...I know when I land on a gallery I love, I open lightbox and just click right.
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Twitter
Photo Blog
On top of what Baldy said, most people don't track actual speed of websites. It's more of a subconcious tracking. You clicked on the photo and boom, there it was. No waiting, instant satisfaction. Most people don't see this on websites and instantly think to write the company and praise them for the speed, but subconsciously, it makes a much smoother browsing experience for you and your customers.
Facebook
Google+
Twitter
Photo Blog
That is OK... fast is always good, and faster is better. But as AceCo55 said I opened a few collage landscape galleries yesterday, and just scrolled down to the end, i did not open any photo (and sometimes i had to wait until the thumbs got loaded...). And now i have 5000 views (while being logged in!). And if i go to the stats especially to the details i can see that all of the galleries i tried have nearly 100% of included images being "viewed".
I think i have to search for alternatives for the stats. I did that yesterday and figured out that google analytics show me photos opened in lightbox. OK, not with a human readable filenames but at least i can open the viewed photo with a single click and can see which one is viewed that much.
I never used google for that, i just have an account for another website, and i find google more confusing then the SM-stats, but at least it does not count prefetched images.
I think i'm done with the SM-stats, i simply replace the link in my browser with a link to google analytics.
Music to my ears Baldy.
What I need is a commitment to creating stats that truly reflect visitor clicks/behavior ... and I appreciate your willingness to investigate this.
I also appreciate the input from Allen and Nick.
Some people say the forum is just a place to complain - I don't agree with that. People here will highlight what they perceive as a problem in order to convince Smugmug that a change needs to be made. Once Smugmug agrees that it is worth looking into, Smuggers with extensive knowledge and skills will offer suggestions about how this might occur.
This is a HUGE strength of Smugmug - especially when someone like Baldy takes the time to provide his perspective.
Whilst the stats are useless to me at the moment, I am excited about what might be developed in the future. I definitely would not be looking elsewhere. Thank you.
www.acecootephotography.com
As a casual, infrequent, hobbyist user I know my value to Smugmug is low. But is sounds like every vote counts, even little ones. So please add my small voice to the fray.
The current stats are useless. We need and want to know what things our audience CHOOSES to look at, not what a browser or server chooses to "pre-fetch". And not what we look at ourselves when uploading, testing, reviewing.
Good stats are very valuable, and valuable to a large enough user base to justify the cost to make them good. SmugMug stats are not a luxury, they are an essential part of the service.
Sounds like the SmugMug engineers have programmed themselves into a corner, with no easy way out. That's unfortunate, but finding a way out is necessary, and unavoidable. The longer it takes, the more stress and embarrassment it puts on the staff.
I feel like if we fix those two things, then we can re-think the bigger picture, no?
As far as the bigger picture goes, how about more in-depth page view, visitor info, and referrer stats? Any reason you guys couldn't be doing everything statcounter does, but even more accurately? I've never found the smugmug stats to be very useful because counting image views doesn't give a very complete picture of how my site is being used. I imagine you guys have all the data already... it's a matter of processing and displaying it which is no small task.
A simple upgrade would be not just showing referring sites, but showing what picture was displayed on the referring site. It's nice to see I got 82 hits from google in the past month, but I can't tell what images they were, where the viewers were from, what they were searching for, or any useful information at all. Statcounter can give me a lot of that kind of info, but smugmug should be able to do it much better... including info for photos viewed on external sites and accurate page view stats for smugmug sites.
Dave
My galleries are private for a reason. I have no idea who or what is looking at and possibly sharing my private images. I haven't viewed most of my older galleries recently but stats for the past month, week and day makes me think someone, not something is browsing my galleries because galleries with women, bodypainting and/or nudes are getting lots more hits than my sunsets.
This is the second major security flaw I've come across on smugmug. Coupled with the loss of other features I liked, it's the straw that broke the camel's back. I'm not renewing my account. For the cost of a pro account, I can buy plenty of secure storage for my images elsewhere.
So I'm wondering if we can get a useful approximation of true user views from the 7 different sizes in the stats table.
If I want to ignore pre-fetches and thumbnails (on gallery pages) can I do that?
What size is fetched by a pre-fetch?
What size is counted for a thumbnail in a gallery view, collage landscape for example?
And a separate question:
In testing, I removed the StatCounter code from my footer. But StatCounter kept racking up hits anyway. I looked at the page source for several pages and saw some StatCounter code was still there. What's that all about?
I am one of the hundreds and not one of the millions and am also in the minority since I loved my undergrad and graduate statistic classes. My first question would be, why would Smugmug “invest over a million dollars a year collecting, storing and displaying stats” if it is only being viewed by 1,000 people like me? That means that you have invested $1,000 so that I can view stats. While I appreciate that, I think there would need to be more to it for a business to invest that much money for such a few number of people. Especially for statistics that really don’t give the user any true information.
In the past I had been able to check the views that had been made to get an idea of what a client was looking at and at times get a bit of a ‘jump start’ on finishing images viewed in that gallery. That no longer happens. I also used it to arrange and rearrange folders based on views and to see what affect the location of a folder might have on views. That no longer happens. I also used it to judge the traffic a folder would have when it came to an event. That no longer happens. I assume that this is progress and I have to deal with it.
As for how views are counted, I have read what has been written and as a person who likes math and math problems, I don’t understand what is being counted or how. Today I have had two galleries that have each had 131 views of the same image, two galleries with 121 views of the same image, one folder with 120 views of the same image, one folder with 119 views of the same image, three galleries with 118 views of the same image, four folders with 117 views of the same image, one gallery with 116 views of the same image, two folders and one gallery with 115 views of the same image, two folders with 114 views of the same image, one folder and one gallery with 113 views of the same image, one gallery with 109 views of the same image, one folder and one gallery with 108 views of the same image, even one gallery that I was credited with three views of each image for opening it and changing it to an “unlisted” gallery. I could understand 1 view, but I only opened it change the settings, and this was done on a computer that should have already had them counted. I had one gallery that had 37,331 views today and 9,163 yesterday (after the upload at 10:00 p.m.), but since I was on my Smugmug site twice yesterday after the upload and several times today was I counted as a view of every image there without opening the gallery? Or maybe since I did the upload I was counted as three views of every image yesterday. I am sorry, but for me this kind of math just does not add up and quite frankly is useless.
I do enjoy many things about my Smugmug account but the title statistics for what is there is a stretch of someone’s imagination. My suggestion is that if it can’t be done accurately, remove it.
Jerry
And the answer to that will be "We're asking an engineer to look into this. I'm passing the information you've provided along to him. Thanks for providing it. We'll get to the bottom of this just as soon as we possibly can."
Jerry
8 views per image sounds like an unusual amount though, I would only expect it to be that high if your browser decided to refresh and refetch everything.
EDIT: Oh yup, changing the gallery to Unlisted causes the address of all the images to change, so your browser will load them all over again and cause another wave of counted image views.
Please check out my gallery of customisations for the New SmugMug, more to come!
http://paultavares.smugmug.com/
I would like to be able to easily see at least two things: 1. I'd like to know how many people visit (and scroll through) a given gallery. I use collage landscape and journal styles to tell stories about a significant event or trip--and I do want to know if I've had visitors who have scrolled through, looking at the photographs and reading the captions. That activity does not require clicking on individual photos. And, 2. I'd like to know which photos are clicked open into lightbox, and how often this occurs. This can give me information regarding which photographs are most intriguing to my audience.
And I'd like all of this to be unaffected by any activity I conduct while logged in to my account.
Is this possible? Please?
stueveshots.smugmug.com
Hi
Did these changes also eliminate the ability of a member to see if a particular recipient had looked at the photos, and, if so, how often? I used to be able to do that, but the function seems to be gone.
LD
From posts #45, it sounds like it does.
I ran a test from Sydney and it said Cloudflare CDN, but its got a California IP for all my images.
Vote for: SmugMug Two factor authentication
Fully agree!
Smugmug: Bayou Oaks Studio
Blog: Journey to the Light
"Serendipity...the faculty of making happy, unexpected discoveries by accident." .... Horace Walpole, 1754 (perhaps that 'lucky shot' wasn't really luck at all!)
Yes, agree.
Smugmug: Bayou Oaks Studio
Blog: Journey to the Light
"Serendipity...the faculty of making happy, unexpected discoveries by accident." .... Horace Walpole, 1754 (perhaps that 'lucky shot' wasn't really luck at all!)
When I noticed this happening I did a search on the referral source name and came up with this on line article. http://kidakaka.com/blog/2015/01/17/getting-bots-increase-traffic-black-hat-way/
The name of the referral site is Hulfington Post not the real Huffington Post
http://paultavares.smugmug.com/
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations