Stats now include owner views. Useless for me. Best alternatives?

livverlips

If you aren't aware, as of July 1st the smugmug internal stats "feature" now includes owner generated image views in its count. This is maddening to me, as it completely defeats the purpose of having stats in the first place. I found this out this morning by having 2 private password protected galleries spike in image view counts, I spent 2 hours embarrassing myself with my clients trying to ascertain who may have shared the links and password. You can read about why they made this change here http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=247841 although in my experience not all of the information the staff has presented is accurate. Read my comments in that thread if you care to.

If you are anything like me and rely on stats to glean information about your clients, you have lost much of the functionality of the site that i have enjoyed over the past many years it has been available. Besides google analytics and statcounter what are the best options for getting a similar individual image view tracking like smugmug originally had available? I need to be able to know when others view an image or a gallery and I need to omit myself from the picture. I understand that I can block my IP on statcounter but I do not use a static IP address for work reasons. So I'm not sure how this will affect my ability to use the service.

Also since smugmugs stats feature would show the image next to the stats as well as show counts for each image size, is there anything comparable available even if its a paid service? The ease at which I could check my stats and see the images and exactly which ones were drawing the most hits is something I have come to rely on and if that is no longer available I need to start looking elsewhere for a service that offers something similar.

Thanks for any input or recommendations.

Richard

In addition to IP address filtering, Statcounter allows you to set a cookie on any machine which will exclude counting hits from that machine/browser. IIRC, Google Analytics has a similar feature using a filter. However, neither of these tools gives you a thumb with its count, which makes them unsuitable for your purpose.

I think you may be fretting unnecessarily about this. Why would you need to know exactly how many hits each pic is getting? What could you do with that information that you can't do if you know which pics are more popular than others? Does it matter if a particular pic gets 100 rather than 103 hits? Keep in mind that SmugMug stats (both old and new) do not distinguish between your clients and Web crawlers, hot links, or other possible means of access. So you have only been dealing with an approximation all along.

Your own hits should pretty much cancel out if you're mainly concerned with rank order of popularity. If for some reason you're looking at one pic much more often than others, you will know that and be able to take it into account.

livverlips

Thanks Richard for the extra information about both the services, I will spend some time reading up more on what they offer.

Why do I need to know when or how many times an image is accessed? Does it matter of one pic gets 100 vs. another with 103? No, but it would matter if I see an image gets 0 vs. 1 view. It would also matter if an image gets 100 vs. 1000. If you didn't read my comments in the other thread mentioned above I will repost the basics here.

I could make a few individual private unlisted galleries with the same photos and submit those photos to different publications and know that the editor I sent them too actually received and was able to view the images. In this instance its use is like an email "read receipt".
Since I often have to edit in between uploads and am uploading multiple versions of the same images I have to review my galleries on multiple browsers as I post and make changes. I also use multiple platforms, desktop PC, iPad, multiple mobile devices, and a laptop. Now views from all of those devices will count individually while before it was all one view while I was logged in. Before I could share a private gallery to a client or to someone I trusted and know exactly when it has been viewed. I could email images to a potential business partner and know that they did in fact see specific images. I am a very visual person and I could tell exactly which images were the most popular in a quick glance without having to pour through pages of data. I could sort popularity of images, highest to lowest, with a single click of a button while on the stats page and see what size images folks were being drawn to for a certain gallery. I could manage and garner how much traffic I am directing from my posts on social media, simply by viewing the days traffic after I make a post of a link to an unlisted gallery that had not been shared elsewhere yet nor has it been indexed by google or other crawlers. if almost all the views are for the smallest image sizes in a post that has gotten thousands of image views that would tell me almost all of the views have come from mobile devices. Knowing how viral a posting or a specific image becomes is very helpful for determining which images may be best for future submissions. Basically the built in stats feature was something I used daily, now I wont ever click on the stats page again. With the changes they have made and for my use they may as well have removed the stats feature entirely.

I think the smugmug folks need to update their help page on the topic to better inform users of this new policy which was rolled out with very little notice. http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93330-viewing-stats

thenickdude

livverlips wrote: »

I could make a few individual private unlisted galleries with the same photos and submit those photos to different publications and know that the editor I sent them too actually received and was able to view the images. In this instance its use is like an email "read receipt".

You can pretty much achieve this by using a URL shortening service to shorten the link to the gallery that you send to them. Then most URL shorteners will be able to tell you exactly how many times that link was clicked.

livverlips

Thanks thenickdude I appreciate the idea, but theres a big difference between a prospective publication editor receiving and clicking on a link to a gallery then not even bothering to click through the images, and them taking the time to view individual photos and possibly grabbing multiple sizes to get a better view. With the old smugmug stats I could know exactly how interested they might be after they view a gallery.

catlady4114

I feel for you livverlips. Stats let me know how to sell to my clients. After they view and share their web proofs, I know what to feature during the selection session. I used to store web proofs on my site and was able to track views and shares much easier. For a while I used flickr because it was easier to organize images and people were more inclined to leave comments.
Even with the new counter counting owner views, something's not right. Private and unlisted galleries that I haven't shared and have not viewed in ages are also getting lots of views. Something's fishy.

AceCo55

Smugmug stats are also counting pre-fetched photos ... even if a visitor never clicks on them
Smugmug have at least acknowledged that it needs to change
See:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=248577
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=247841

DeeRich

Don't know that this will help, but I use a Wufoo form as a guest book (link domain name to the http://wufoo.com form [code provided], then the Wufoo form to the gallery...there is an option to direct the form with http window).

It's very simple...just a "Welcome" word or two, then a single line for their name (I make that optional). You can set up a Wufoo form to keep track of every entry (whether the visitor adds their name or not), and show the IP address as well as other info. Of course this does not show any hits. HOWEVER, I jot down the stat count (or do a printscreen) when I am through editing...this is pretty up-to-date time-wise...I think. Hits after one logs out are revealing.
EmailMeForm.com is very similar to Wufoo.

DeeRich
oursite.smugmug.com

leftquark

I am pleased to announce that we have fixed the issue with stats including owner views. See more info here: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=252551