Stats are way off

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   sparksterposted 7 years ago

   I noticed this many months ago and the problem is still the same now and is measurable. I don't know if this applies to other users also but the stats showing in my account are way inaccurate. For example, after publishing my latest hub, my Blogger stats showed that over 290 users had clicked through to my blog from my latest hub. However, my Hubpages stats are showing that the hub has only been viewed 75 times. I've also given it quite a few days to allow for the stats to be updated and there is no change. I've noticed this very same pattern on many occasions now and it's pretty clear from my observations that stats are not being reported anywhere near correctly.

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2. 91

   jansharesposted 7 years ago

   I recall in a recent forum post someone saying that HP does not count views from social media. Our stats reflect organic traffic from Google, Bing, etc. I 'm not sure about this because I also recall hearing about hubs that went "viral" when posted on Facebook.

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      RonElFranposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Jan, HP does count social media views. I have a couple of articles that have received a combined total of more than 100k views mostly from social media, and they are a big part of my overall stats.

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         jansharesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Okay, thanks.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      The truth is that all page views count in terms of income, but not traffic.  In other words, you could have a post that has thousands of views from social networks but none from Google, and it could become unfeatured due to lack of traffic.  You would get paid for them, but they would no longer be featured so search engines would not be able to find them.
      
      I believe the reason for this is to keep people from "gaming the system" by having all of their fans on social networks click onto their articles.

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         jansharesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         That's the info I didn't specifically recall. Thanks, TIME.

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      NateB11posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Social media views are not counted in terms of featuring or unfeaturing articles; that is, you can get unfeatured if all you get is social media traffic because what counts is organic search engine traffic. But social traffic does show up in stats. Once in awhile I'll get a flood of traffic from Facebook because an article was shared and it shows up in stats.

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         jansharesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks, NateB11, for clarifying.

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   revolutionbjjposted 7 years ago

   janshares, this is decidedly not true.  Most of my views come from social media.

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   ChristinSposted 7 years ago

   Social media views are indeed counted.

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5. 72

   somethgblueposted 7 years ago

   Hub Pages has always been way off, I have tracked some of my articles from other tracking sites that have these articles getting as much 3 to 4 times as many visitors. It was explained to me that HP requires visitors to stay on a page for 3 minutes and 50 seconds  for us to qualify for a page view, so realy all out stats should be way higher . . . of course its all about money, so if you are in it for $$$ HP would not be my first option but I don't write for money, so I really don't care!

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      alikhan3posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Can you recall where you read that? 3 minutes and 50 seconds is a lot of time

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         somethgblueposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I'm pretty sure it was from a conversation I had with a long time Hubber but it could have been with an administrator, it used to be only a minute 45 but they upped it because they were paying out too much.
         
         Yeah it is a long time and that is why I make my hubs at least 3,000 words to keep people on the page. I will try and verify that for you and get back to you.

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            alikhan3posted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Yes please do so, because that has worried me. If that is indeed the case then I (We) must change our approach to article writing and focus more on visitor interaction.

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               SheilaMilneposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               I don't think that can be correct.  My average, according to Google Analytics, over the past year has been only just over 3 minutes, and yet I am still being credited with views, and being paid.

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                  alikhan3posted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  That is why I have asked somethgblue to dig out the facts for us.
                  If not three whole minutes then how much?

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                     ChristinSposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                     Someone needs to ask staff here directly about this or they need to read this and respond.  That does not in any way sound correct to me.

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6. 85

   sparksterposted 7 years ago

   Hardly any of my hubs are "unfeatured" so it's definitely not that. Most of my traffic comes from Google but I do also get plenty of social media traffic and yes, it is counted (although not accurately). I can't see how many of these suggestions could be true when HP knows that people can just move their content to their own site or blog and actually get paid genuinely. Why would they do that unless they want to drive their users away? Makes no sense.

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      Christy Kirwanposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Hi sparkster,
      
      There are certain factors we take into account. For example, if a reader leaves the page before the ads are done loading, the visit is not counted (because you aren't earning from it).
      
      Also, we do occasionally have bugs with the stats, but earnings are calculated on a separate system and verified very carefully. The stats you see in your account are a courtesy we provide to Hubbers to give an idea of what traffic/earnings will be like, but any issues you see in them will have no effect on your actual earnings.

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         sparksterposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I'm sorry Christy but they don't reflect that in any way, shape or form. I've been keeping a close eye on this for months, if not getting on for a year now, and earnings are always reflected in the stats regardless of accuracy. In other words, if the stats are inaccurately reported then earnings are also inaccurate. It doesn't take a genius to see this. There is something very wrong here and there has been for a long time now and it doesn't seem to be getting any better, only worse. I am pretty confident that if I removed all my content from here and hosted it on my own site that it would perform ten times better and I am considering doing exactly that. Splitting the site into separate parts with different domains certainly hasn't helped either and is an incredibly silly move in my opinion because it now means that none of those sites are unique and neither is Hubpages - just different parts of the same site with different domain names. That was a dumb move and is not doing any justice, only worsening quality. There is just no integrity to this site any more. I feel I have been wasting my time here and unfortunately I can't see any improvements happening in the foreseeable future.

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            alikhan3posted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Calm down sparkster, You know that Hubpages gives us only 60% of impressions and revenue share but after very closely monitoring my account statistics, the actual ratio rests at around 50%, even less then that. 10-20% of impressions are lost 'somewhere', for which the HP learning center says that some people have applied ad blockers.
            
            At least for me their is always a 10-20% discrepancy between reported stats and actual stats for Ad Program.
            
            Hope that is also the case with you, Although I have never found major discrepancy in reported statistics in My account on HP.
            
            Not to forget that HP stats always report less impressions when compared with google analytics! (This I have never understood why)
            
            Again for Us, each impression is hard earned and it matter.

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               sparksterposted 7 years agoin reply to this

               Don't tell me to calm down. I am already calm. There are tons of things I could complain about here lately, the entire site has been going downhill rapidly in a myriad of ways for the last year or so and is dying a death but I haven't even delved into any of that and already you're telling me to calm down. I have enough personal experience in this area that even taking everything you've stated into consideration that it still doesn't add up. Nowhere near it. It's becoming beyond a joke.

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                  alikhan3posted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  Then mail the screenshots to HP staff straight away.

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                  revolutionbjjposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                  Calmer than you are.

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7. 91

   Chriswillman90posted 7 years ago

   What's going on with the stats now, it looks like they just glitched back.

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      The team must be getting ready for an update again or something.  Numbers are totally different now from where they were an hour or so ago.  They'll fix it...soon I hope!

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         somethgblueposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Yeah it looks like I lost about 350 page views.

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   C.V.Rajanposted 7 years ago

   When a ship is sinking, don't ask why breakfast was not served in time.

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