Stats And Why I Use Them

xtnomadxtnomad Registered Users Posts: 340 Major grins
edited June 13, 2006 in SmugMug Support
It is easy to every one what stats do, they keep tract of the views your photos. Thats easy. But as a new Pro user I have found other uses of stats. The only reason I am at Smugmug is to sell photos of action sports events. I like the info provited by Smugmug about the views of my photos but have found one dark side. In the review of my stats I have found a few stats that are over the normal amoumts in a single gallery. After looking at the most popular gallery and compasating for that feature in the stat numbers, I see I have found that some of the the computer savey youngsters have posted my photos on other sites or thier home pages. I found this out by a friends son that said it could be done. I have no proof about this but have seen a gallery that has a average of lets say 100 views and some have over 400, and a few are not in the ( most popular gallery ) that would explain the numbers. I have all so noticed that my competetrs have changed thier sites and proof marks as some of the riders are taking pictures of thier screen shots and posting them thru thier own computer software and posting them. This is a new age in technology and wandering were to go from here. :dunno
xtnomad :wink

Comments

  • Mike LaneMike Lane Registered Users Posts: 7,106 Major grins
    edited June 12, 2006
    As I mentioned in the previous thread, I find google analytics much more useful for my purposes. At this point I'm not so concerned with conversion rates and image views (particularly since I get unlimited bandwidth as a pro user). Like xtnomad I do use stats to get a general feel of if someone is hotlinking to my images in a particular gallery. It is kind of a blunt instrument for those purposes, however. If you've got a massive view rate on a gallery from which you haven't hotlinked an image yourself then you know something may be up. I have no idea if it is possible at all, none, but one feature that you can't get from analytics or statcounter is a way to tell where your images are downloaded from. It'd be great if there was a page that told you in general terms what URL or even IP was pulling your images. I think that'd be something that everyone would like to have if it's possible. If it's not possible, then it isn't; I wouldn't know :D
    Y'all don't want to hear me, you just want to dance.

    http://photos.mikelanestudios.com/
  • mcgilmcgil Registered Users Posts: 110 Major grins
    edited June 12, 2006
    Regarding the protected galleries, would we be able to see how many people tried to login and how many did indeed login and view it ?
    A bit like in the classic web server logs.

    I'd be also interested in seeing more classic stats ... IP (resolved), Referer, User Agent ... no ? :)

    Thanks
  • dmcdmc Registered Users Posts: 427 Major grins
    edited June 12, 2006
    I do use statcounter... but smugmug stats are nice since you see a thumbnail of the pic that was viewed and shows how many views. save me a step.

    simple enhancements for me would be:
    1) when displaying a particular gallery, sort by # originals viewed descending, # Larges descending, # Mediums desc, etc... ie to see which photo's were most popular first.

    2) stop tracking (optionally?) tiny and thumbnail views... messes up the charts.

    3) create "reset statistics" button.... after the first week, there are too many views to figure out what is recent.
  • pat.kanepat.kane Registered Users Posts: 332 Major grins
    edited June 12, 2006
    Another suggestion -- allow us to ignore traffic from the site owner. I'm not really interested in my own page views, but in those of others. It might not be possible to do this, but I thought I'd put it on the table anyway :D
  • C_lawgikC_lawgik Registered Users Posts: 103 Major grins
    edited June 13, 2006
    pat.kane wrote:
    Another suggestion -- allow us to ignore traffic from the site owner. I'm not really interested in my own page views, but in those of others. It might not be possible to do this, but I thought I'd put it on the table anyway :D

    with statcounter you can do that by blocking your own ip
    http://wiki.shahine.com/default.aspx/MyWiki.SendToSmugMug
    Really good upload program for smugmug^^^


  • RichardRichard Administrators, Vanilla Admin Posts: 19,989 moderator
    edited June 13, 2006
    Mike Lane wrote:
    As I mentioned in the previous thread, I find google analytics much more useful for my purposes. At this point I'm not so concerned with conversion rates and image views (particularly since I get unlimited bandwidth as a pro user). Like xtnomad I do use stats to get a general feel of if someone is hotlinking to my images in a particular gallery. It is kind of a blunt instrument for those purposes, however. If you've got a massive view rate on a gallery from which you haven't hotlinked an image yourself then you know something may be up. I have no idea if it is possible at all, none, but one feature that you can't get from analytics or statcounter is a way to tell where your images are downloaded from. It'd be great if there was a page that told you in general terms what URL or even IP was pulling your images. I think that'd be something that everyone would like to have if it's possible. If it's not possible, then it isn't; I wouldn't know :D
    Yeah, this is a great idea. I have seen this happen a few times on my galleries. It didn't really cause me any problems as I have never come even close to my bandwidth limit, but I was damn curious to know who was linking to my images. Since this is probably a rare situation for SM users, to conserve resources it might best be done as something the user could toggle on for a particular image. Something like that.

    Cheers,
    My Pics
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