As a newer blogger, I check my stats several times a day. They say this is a common affliction, and that I’ll get over it someday soon. I have a stats question for someone smarter than I am.
How can my stats show two or three views for one day, when the article I published that day has six or eight likes? Six or eight people visited in order to like the article, but the stats don’t reflect that. Can anyone help me out here? (I’m not obsessed, or anything. I’m checking stats after I post this.)
My world map continues to fill in, which I think is cool. Welcome to the new visitors from Romania and Ireland. I’m still waiting for someone from the International Space Station, but they’ve been a little busy this week.
The post about internet safety was pretty popular. I updated it and invited everyone to forward it to their loved ones, or re-blog it. I never thought to suggest it when I posted it. No one should be taken by an online predator, and if even one person is helped it was worth writing.
The WordPress app seems to have a flaw, in my opinion. If I want to include a picture, it doesn’t give me the option to choose from my WordPress media folder. It allows me to choose directly from my hard drive. When I’ve done this, it seems like the images aren’t displaying on other computers. My theory is that the image isn’t going out into cyberspace unless it comes from the WordPress media file. I may have to write with the app, then edit the post to include the images. Any suggestions here are most welcome.
Entertaining Stories 
Okay, I’ll take a shot at answering your questions, although I’m no expert.
As far as how you can have more likes than page views, that may be due to what I call internet entrepreneurs. These are “bloggers” who want you to join their money making scheme so you can be rolling in dough and do all the things you’ve always wanted to do. See my post on exactly this matter: http://mindfuldigressions.com/2013/12/03/they-like-me-they-really-like-me/.
I don’t know exactly how they do it, but I get a few likes from these trolls the instant I post something, yet my stats (I use something called StatCounter…it’s free) shows no visits or pageviews. I’ll bet if you checked out the blogs of some of those who “like” your posts, they’re just trying to get you to sign up with them.
Yes, you do have to upload images from your hard drive into your WordPress media file. I don’t know if it’s a flaw or just the way WordPress does it. I used to blog on TypePad, and I didn’t have to do that. But that’s the way WordPress works. It’s pretty easy, though. Just go to the WordPress media file and upload the image. Then embed your uploaded image into your post. Of course, if you have a lot of image files, you may want to buy-up a little more storage space on WordPress.
And maybe that’s why they do it that way. TypePad was not a free hosting site, like WordPress is, so the potential to have to buy more storage may be a way to generate some additional revenue for WordPress.
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Awesome, thanks. I thought maybe it had to do with someone reading more than one post; therefore, one visit and two likes. I’ve seen some of the join my bandwagon folks already, and I’m going to read your post.
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I am glad that you are enjoying your experience so far and yes, you will get over the stat checking thing! I didn’t check mine for ages and then it was pointed out that I had my best hits and so I started looking at them again. One thing I would say though, is really don’t get too bogged down by stats. They are great in terms of numbers but that doesn’t necessarily reflect the success of your blog. When I first started I got really intimidated by big blogs and worried that I was getting it all wrong because my blog was so small (and relatively still is). But… although I don’t have masses of followers, those that do follow me, are some of the kindest and nicest people that I have ever met and they have supported me throughout my journey – and that to me, is worth more than numbers on a page. The other thing to bear in mind is that if your blog grows massively, you are going to have a huge job keeping up with it, so don’t beat yourself up if your stats aren’t what you would like them to be. I think that is what I am trying to say! 🙂
Another thought on the ‘likes’ thing. With the new WP Reader, you can like a post by clicking on the like button in the Reader or just passing through to the first page without actually visiting the site, and that doesn’t register as a visit although it will register as a like.
One way to try to help with this is to make sure that your blog content can only be completely viewed by visiting your site. If you want to know how to do this then let me know and I will check back to see what I did.
Sorry – long and rambling! Good luck with it all though.
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Thanks Jade. I’m not going to get too worked up over it. Everyone says it’s a passing obsession. The people here are wonderful, and that’s much more important than numbers.
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Your visitor from Ireland here. 😀
I can only echo what others before me have said; the likes from other people’s Readers won’t count as a visit in your stats. Everyone has followers like this but thankfully there are plenty of genuine readers who will take a real interest in your blog.
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Thanks V. I’m going to calm down on my stats for now. On the other hand, today was a record day.
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