We made some changes recently that may impact the view count you see on your posts.
Updated our filter list of bots and crawlers, which we aim to exclude from those view counts
View counts now happen via Javascript, instead of on the server-side. This allowed us to add a caching layer that improves performance for everyone – but if a reader doesn’t have Javascript enabled, their visit won’t be reflected in your view counts
If you have any questions or concerns, let me know!
And I was so set on the non javascript option, and looking forward to the server side stats to improve. Javascript analytics is blocked increasingly, rendering server logs increasingly more relevant.
EDIT: And I can confirm indexing by the webarchive.org is still listed in the stats.
I just want to say I appreciate all attempts to improve the view counts.
One suggestion. In principle it’s obvious to a techie that a view counter is going to be an approximation, with some ways in which it could be wildly inaccurate. However, as a techie and admin, still for the last N years I have been running my WF blog, liking to see my view counts, but having no idea what kind of counting it uses, no idea what degree of repetition and non-view counting might be included in the numbers. No idea whether it’s mostly from bots or mostly real readers.
My suggestion is just to add a bit of text in the admin, explaining roughly what the count implies. Maybe a pop-up or footnote, and saying something like:
“The view count aims to exclude common bots and crawlers, and repeat views from apparently the same [IP address/browser/whatever it is the algorithm tries to do]. As a side effect it also excludes viewers who don’t run javascript [and viewers sharing an IP address/browser/whatever the case may be…]. See [link] for more details.”
I just feel a bit of explanation like that would make me more comfortable with the thing. But maybe it’s still pretty much just as vague as not knowing, so maybe not. Just a thought.