Good afternoon,
I am facing problems with the visit counts in my blog posts. Since three weeks, I think it is not registering correctly as I passed from an average post views of 1.500-2.000 in 7 days to a 60-300 in 7 days…
– Usual views (post published 3 weeks ago): http://www.glutenfreeadventures.net/restaurantes-sin-gluten-en-gante/
– Views in the last post (it was published yesterday, and usually at this time I would have 500-700 views already): http://www.glutenfreeadventures.net/restaurantes-sin-gluten-en-avinon-1/
Has something changed on the “post_views_count” feature? Usually all my visits come through our facebook page (organic and sponsored post).
As I am not using any caching plugin, I have the “ajax view count” disabled through the THEME PANEL (NEWSMAG); and I have active the “WPBAKERY VISUAL COMPOSER” and the “tagDiv Social counter”.
Could you please help me finding out what I did wrong?
Thank you,
It’s a simple hit counter. You likely want to start looking at “actual” traffic stats, which most web hosts offer via your hosting panel, to see “actual” visits to your site. The hit counter will be mix of ‘bots’ and ‘actual views’ — and may drop if the host/server starts blocking ‘bad bots’ (we do that here).
For example once we installed Fail2Ban to stop bad bots pummeling our site; a story in a niche site might drop from 15,000 over first couple of days to as little as 1,000 hits/views once the bots taken out of the views/counter.
Just some feedback. 🙂
Thank you for your quick reply simchris!
Do you mean that all “views” I had until three weeks ago were fake?
My website is in English and Spanish, and in Spanish I was having an average of 1500-2000 “views” and in English “90-150”. Do “bad bots” only affected the Spanish Language?
When did you installed the Fail2Ban? I just have this “problem” since three weeks.
Thank you in advance,
This is the last post where I had the usual number of “views”:
– Spanish: http://www.glutenfreeadventures.net/restaurantes-sin-gluten-en-gante/
– English: http://www.glutenfreeadventures.net/en/gluten-free-restaurants-in-ghent/
As you will see, in the Spanish version I have 1664 views and in the English version 204.
The post in both languages was published at the same time
Again, it’s a simple hit counter; it increments each time page is loaded, it does not do anything else.
You need to use a stats/reporting product to understand ‘actual’ traffic to your site. The hit counter is only useful as general reference. And yes, if your traffic drops, it will not count as many times.
So, good to
a) check to see if you have console errors in chrome; run the audits;
b) check your search console on Google (etc) for errors/warnings
c) if your traffic is loaded over /amp you might not be tracking ‘hits’ — you would need to test that
d) note that Google may no longer show your site in SERPS if not mobile optimized and https — without https and mobile optimization via the lighthouse audit in Chrome, they may not move your site to ‘mobile first in SERPS’ and you *will* lose traffic
