Absolutely bogus results

  • rkyburz

    (@rkyburz)


    9 years, 2 months ago

    I have the current version (8.8) of that plugin, my WP installation is up-to-date — and this plugin is absolutely unusable, a plugout, in fact. Not only does it provide results that are in the order of 10 times too high compared to real visit / hit counts (as provided by Google Analytics and other tools), it also has serious internal errors: I regularly encounter instances where for a given day the Hits graph has a factor 2 error (too high), or conversely, the number logged is 2 times the value shown in the graph. Good luck to anyone who is considering to monetize based on these visitor stats! I have tried my best to exclude counts from local tools (e.g., link checking) — to no avail. Are you counting database transactions rather than pages / posts served? If every image would generate a hit count, that might explain the results — but of course that would be useless. If indeed, as a recent report indicates, the plugin also includes malware, then that’s not just bad, but a disaster. I’ll remove the plugin now.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Thread Starter rkyburz

    (@rkyburz)

    9 years, 2 months ago

    Please ignore the sentence about the malware — I should have read the relevant responses first. However, I do stand behind my other, genuine complaints.

    Plugin Contributor Greg Ross

    (@gregross)

    9 years, 2 months ago

    I’m sorry you don’t find it useful, WP Statistics tracks every hit to your site, regardless of where it came from, and then excludes what you have selected.

    This does tend to provide higher hit counts than tools like Google that rely on client side scripting, but gives a much better view of actual site usage.

    Client side scripting often under counts as anyone using tools like NoScript or AdBlock are not counted at all.

    Thread Starter rkyburz

    (@rkyburz)

    9 years, 2 months ago

    I do not expect identical results, as the methods are different. However, a factor of 10 is simply unreasonable. I have had my Blog on Blogger before, and so I have a good idea about the size of my audience. I moved my blog to WP a couple months ago, and Google Analytics tells me that within 3 months I have not yet re-gained the previous audience (which I had built up over 3+ years), which is perfectly reasonable. However, your plugin tells me that in 1 month now I’m getting the number of visits that previously took 1 year to accumulate, which simply can’t be. And as I stated: the people who expect to monetize based on your numbers are in for a (bad) surprise (if on the other hand a user simply enjoys big numbers — go ahead and enjoy!).
    Plus, there are those “factor 2” errors (at least one every couple weeks) either in the graph or in the numeric report, which seriously undermine my trust in your numbers.
    I have done whatever I could to exclude search engines and local traffic, etc. — overall, I have simply lost faith in your results.

    Thread Starter rkyburz

    (@rkyburz)

    9 years, 2 months ago

    Let me add: if Google Analytics ignores those script kids and spammers that try to place spam in my comments etc., while in your tool, these perhaps (likely?) count as “actual site usage”, then I rather prefer the smaller numbers provided by Google Analytics — so far, I fail to see the benefit in your unrealistically high visitor / hit count, as I’m not interested in bogus traffic / spamming etc.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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