Hi there,
We have gotten accustomed with an amount of page views in relation to how FB posts and retweets are being received on social media. Lets say, 50 RT’s would regularly deliver about 800 page views.
But suddenly, its like the amount of page views has gone down by approximately 80 %. In other words the numbers are no longer reflecting the activity on the site in relation to our social media channels.
1. How would we get our page view count work properly again without removing the current count view on our existing articles?
2. Also how would upgrading the newspaper mag to #6 effect the page views(Since we need to fully delete the old version of the theme when we upgrade)
Looking forward to your answer and any other information in regards with page views that you could think of.
Mucha K.
The page count actually counts how many times the page is loaded/viewed and not tied to FB in any way. Page views are written to custom field per post (look at the extra fields in your post view). So, you can update theme without losing the post views per post.
Note that FB has been changing how they show stuff to people, so somebody liking or sharing doesn’t always translate into any specific number of views from FB — theme doesn’t control whether people CLICK THROUGH from a share on FB to your site/pages.
For advanced users, you can start using a shortcode with tracking where you use shortcode for social and then track that by number of times shortcode is clicked through. But that is likely outside the scope of what you want to do here.
Not sure any of that helps .. just food for thought.
I have the same problem.
After upgrading to the latest version of Newspaper my page views severely gone down at the same rate like Mucha K (80%).
I think somehow it doesn’t count correctly.
I have a lot of post click on FB and the page views are way down.
Can anyone help us in fixing this?
There must be an issue as it happens to both of us.
Hello,
As far as we know there is no problem with the like counts. Please allow it some time to update as the count is not a live one. It will pull the info from facebook and it will also ad the like you get on your article directly (not through facebook)
I will add this anyway to our list so we can run a few more tests with it so please let us know if in a few days the counter will still have less likes then on facebook. (Please also clear your cache as it is affected by it)
Thank you!
Thank you for your answer Bogdan.
This is not about the FB likes.
What I’m saying here is that if for example an user comes from a Facebook post directly to the post in the Newspaper theme, the view post it’s not counted at first. Then if you hit refresh it will increment the views count.
The same thing it happens if you enter the site, go to the post. You have to hit refresh to increment.
Hello,
I understand now. Please try to use this option and see if the counter increases without refreshing the page: http://screencast.com/t/S4V5HENJWW – https://forum.tagdiv.com/ajax-view-count/
Let us know how it goes.
Thank you!
I did follow the steps. Enable the Ajax option and then cleared the cache.
If I’m going manually it’s updating the views and I can see the number increase.
Yet I still think that there is an issue here as the views are still lower.
Even more there is that gap between the Facebook clicks and post views.
On Facebook I can see on my post how many times users clicked on post which is redirecting to the post site.
That number is higher that the post views reported in WordPress.
I want to add to the above post that also the statistics from Jetpack it’s showing much more views than the one reported by Newspaper.
Thanks guys for picking this up.
More importantly I would like to make clear the following. When a post on social media is being received very well, you create an ability (This is not rocket-science) to predict a certain amount of views.
When almost overnight these views (of the article-counter, not the facebook counter)is tumbling down by +/- 80 % there must be a problem with the theme. I understand each social media post will not redirect the same amount of traffic. In other words, for example, 50 retweets of a Tweet will not always redirect the same number of link clicks to the specific article. But after approximately 10 posts on the site to see the views go down by 80% on each post suggests that something is wrong. I hope this is what is being tested.
Additionally, yes we cleaned cache and we are testing it this week. Hope it has been solved.
Have a great week guys!
Using the theme for over 2 years and social links have gone UP for us, not down.
I highly doubt the “theme” impacts people on Facebook clicking a link to your website. How would they see your site prior to visiting it — that doesn’t make sense, unless I’m missing your point.
It’s not rocket science.
For all marketing efforts, why not simply go back to another theme and see how your page views are doing?
Also, note that the best way to measure site views is actually at the server level “above” the web pages, as this precludes issues with caching and javacript disabled, adblockers, etc.
@ChrisS. The fact that there are 2 of us that have this issue should rise a flag. I’m 100% sure there is an issue or a change of code that produce the 80% drop in views. And what I’m saying is not related to Facebook.
I agree that the best way to measure is at the server level.
But if I want to display the views and the actual users are seeing a drop of 80% in views … well for me it’s a big issue. Because they will think the site is not popular anymore and I guess you know and understand what this means.
Hello,
I tested this again on our end but could not recreate the issue. The post view will increment every time the post is being accessed weather it’s directly from the website or from facebook/other social network. We could not find any problem. Please try to disable all your plugins except visual composer, clear cache and reset cdn if you use it. There could be a plugin conflict/caching issue that is affecting your views. You can test the counter yourself by refreshing the post page or accessing it from facebook. The counter should increment on every access. If it doesn’t, then please send us an email at contact@tagdiv.com and provide wp-admin so we can inspect this issue on your end because like I said above, we cannot recreate it on our end. Also please post a link to this topic so we can identify you.
Thank you!
@BogdanB I did all you said less disabling all plugins. I can’t disable all the plugins because this is a live site and will impact the site for too long time.
I can provide you with wp-admin access if you want. Maybe this way you will understand what I’m trying to explain.
Maybe during the upgrade I did something wrong, even if I followed the steps from Newspaper documentation.
Sorry. Guess my point was the counter *is* working on thousands of sites “right now” without issue.
So, this typically means something on YOUR site(s) has a conflict with the simple “hit counter” which is just a dumb counter that increments +1 each time page is loaded/viewed.
Some plugins might conflict with this “function” — some caching setups won’t count the increment, hence the ajax method, and “hits” may go down if fewer “bots” are pinging the page (which hare false “reads”). “Hits” can also go down if you get less spammer attempts by live spam farms and spam bots.
On one site we were getting 4,000 views first day for some posts; when we blocked the Ukraine spam farms, it went down to 850 views.
Just some feedback, not trying to play down the issue you’re having 🙂
@ChrisS This attitude doesn’t help and I hope the developers doesn’t have the same one. I’m paying for a product that should work with most common plugins.
I’m a software tester for the last 15 years. When I’m upgrading a product from one version to another (Newspaper 6.5 to 6.6.4) without adding other settings or other software(in our case plugins) I shouldn’t loose any functionality and things should work the same. If that is not the case it should be put in the release notes in order for people to know there is an issue.
In my case: I didn’t change anything to the site. Not a single change in settings. Then I’ve upgraded and I started to get issues. This is a problem, a software defect.
@BogdanB If my feedback it’s not wanted please let me know. I thought you might want to know the issues in order to fix it.
Belive me when I’m saying this is an issue. It’s not normal to loose functionality over an upgrade.
Until this is fixed I will disable this feature and I hope the developer will announce the community it is an issue and get it fixed.
@ChrisB We did blocked Ukraine bots long time ago. A more positive approach it’s better appreciated by the clients. Getting in defense mode it’s not what users appreciate.
Hello Andrei,
Please send us wp-admin via email (contact@tagdiv.com) so we can take a look and check for any errors. If we find any, they will certainly get fixed. There is no doubt about it, but we have no such reports and all our tests did not reveal any problems with the counter so please write us an email and let us inspect this issue on your website. Please also provide a link to this topic.
Thank you!
Hi, i encounter this also, and finally solve it.
im not sure whether it is the same issue.
this happened to me after i installed the wp super cache plugin.
after i found out this problem, the plugin actually cache the hits..
u can modify it from there. it says something like hit count cache. then untick.
after the untick you will get the same flow of hit counter that u used to get.
hope helps;
Since andrei doesnt like my atitude, maybe your ideas might help him. ?
