Blogger Stats
On our first post, we mentioned having become suspicious of Blogger stats and now it looks like a good time to elaborate on it.
The first thing we noticed was that when Google Search Console tests an URL, it counts as 1 view (on WordPress.com it counted as 2), but things have been getting more confusing. For instance, a while back, we realized that checking the preview of an already published post can sometimes count as a view as well. And copying the link might get another view, too, depending on the device. We’ve recently done an experiment with our review of Robert W Chambers’s The King in Yellow, and first posted the link on Bluesky and Threads and the next day on Twitter/X. The goal was to see which platform gets us the most views, but it also allowed us to see how the link becoming active when we post it affects Blogger stats. So:
GSC URL Inspection = 1 view
Copying the link = 1 view
Link becoming active on Bluesky upon posting = 1 view
Link becoming active on Threads upon posting = 1 view
Link becoming active on Twitter/X upon posting = 1 views
That’s 5 fake views. As of now, that review that took us several days to write and not only evaluates Chambers’s 4 stories featuring the infamous accursed play as individual works, but also delves into the meaning of said play and the nature of the titular King, only has 8 views. This translates to, at most, 3 real views, and we’re not even sure if Twitter/X didn’t count as 2 this time, which would make it only 2 real views out of 8 counted by Blogger stats. It also means that any post that went through the same process and doesn’t have more than 5 views wasn’t seen by anyone but us. The most recent example is the Aurora (2018) review on The Snarky Cats of Ulthar blog. The 11 views that TV Review: The Grimm Variations (2024) got so far are, in reality, only 6, or maybe even less. Of course, just because those are outside views it still doesn’t mean much. How many of them are actual readers and how many are bots or scammers who immediately scrolled down and left after seeing that there was no Comments Section to spam with their crap?
The country of origin can make things even more confusing. For instance, at one point we started getting hundreds of views from China and Hong Kong, which we found a little odd as Google and Blogger are supposed to be blocked over there. The only way people can access either of them is by using a VPN, so their visits would not turn up like this. These views have simply disappeared and more recently we started getting views from Singapore. Clearly we’re still suffering from PTSD from our first blogging experience because our first thought was that the Singaporean hackers had found us. Why anyone would think to target our digital enclave remains as much a mystery now as it was 2 years ago when we were reading the daily WordFence reports, but stranger things have happened. We’ve been debating whether we should allow comments on a few posts just to see what visitors want, but that would mean moderating them, and that’s pretty much the reason we hid the Comments Section in the first place.
Since we previously complained about WordPress views, or lack thereof, we’d like to point out that there are many posts on our blogs with a lot more than 5 views, and that was when we were only posting links on Twitter/X. So, even if Blogger stats are inflated, WordPress was still a desert.
While we’re obvious upset with the iffiness of Blogger stats, we’re not planning on quitting our blogs - we are however wondering if maybe we should start every post with ‘Hello void!’.
