Hey @cantabber,
Usually when any plugin or service checks for URL’s or stuff which relates to verifying something, it has a corn job which would be triggered to check the links and we are using curl_getinfo to check the status of the link so that should be counted as one visit. As of now, there is no way I see it can be changed but maybe you can check with the stats plugin author if that is being counted on your stats.
I did check the same on my end and I did not see unique visits. Also, if you see the visits, can you tell me what is the referrer for those visits to understand this more clearly? Looking forward to hearing from you on it.
Thank you,
Prathamesh Palve
Hi Prathamesh,
I don’t think I can see the referrers. WP.com hosts my site, and while I have FTP access into my server space and Google Analytics doing its thing for me, I don’t know of any way to tell exactly who/where those visits are coming from (which is why I asked the question in the first place, because I couldn’t tell). Unless there’s something I’m unaware of, which is of course possible, I’m not an actual IT person. 😉 The ‘stats plugin’ I’m using is just the Stats & Insights page in my WP admin area, which doesn’t offer much by way of detail. Sorry I’m not more helpful. If there’s somewhere you could point me to directly to look at, I’ll be glad to do that.
Hello @cantabber,
Could you point me to the plugin you are currently using?
Also, I checked with the following two plugins and I could not replicate the case:
WP Statistics:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-statistics/
Beehive: https://wordpress.org/plugins/beehive-analytics/
Usually, plugins use the JS way to track the visits. Both of the above plugins use the same which is where I suppose it could not affect the visits counter but if the stats you use or the way they are shown or being fetched are from the server level; checks, it should be affected as those would also count the bots visiting the sites as individual visits. Can you check with wp.com for the same once?
Thank you,
Prathamesh Palve
Hi again,
I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear – it’s not a plug-in, it’s the basic default display of traffic “Stats and Insights” that WP provides in the My Site area of tools and all that comes along with my account plan. It’s nothing external that I can point you to.
I’ll see what I can find out from the WP folks, although I’m in the middle of some work with a deadline at the moment, this isn’t top-of-the-urgent-pile. Maybe the most efficient answer would be to install one of the stats plug-ins you mention and ignore the WP info, although I try not to get carried away with the number of plug-ins I use.
If you want to mark this thread resolved I won’t mind, you may not want to leave it hanging until I can respond further. If I learn anything from WP when I have more time to go into it with them, I can start a new thread.
Thanks for your time & effort. Again, the plug-in is incredibly useful, even if it’s inflating my hit count. 😉
Hello @cantabber,
When you have time maybe after finishing your current stack of urgent stuff, could you just check how are the WP.com folks having their stats setup? Is that server-based or javascript based as I mentioned so we get an overview of things?
For now, I will mark this as resolved but should you have any update or get time to debug further, feel free to reply in the thread below and we would be happy to help.
Thank you,
Prathamesh Palve
