I absolutely liked it... I didnt understand why so many hits from Saudi Arabia and Lithuania would come to my site in the first place... Godd job guys !!!

Chris wrote:

Websites get visited by an amazing amount of non-human visitors. They could be search engines that read you page to determine placement, or spammers whose "bots" try to post links in your Guestbook. Colin has just put in place some updates to the site traffic report system to filter all these out, so if you see a page view or a visit, you can be sure it is from a living, breathing fan, not a spam bot from Saudi Arabia.

"Unique Visitors" are also more accurate now. Previously, we relied on IP addresses to determine unique visitors (this is how most stats programs work). Because some large internet providers like AOL share IP addresses for groups of people, it could result in inaccurate unique visitor numbers.

As per many member requests, we stopped logging all your visits that happen via the control panel (you can still test stats by going directly to your URL though).

Next, we improved the speed of displaying stats, so you can see visitors as soon as 5 minutes after they hit your page.

Finally, we updated the location database, so going forward, you will have fewer "unknown" visitors (this update will only take effect at the end of the week).

The net result will be that some members have reduced traffic numbers (especially those of you with guestbook pages hit by spammers). We figure it is better to provide you with the most accurate numbers rather than just boost your ego with inflated, but inaccurate visits. Let us know what you think!

The number of visitors to our site did drop suddenly. I was content in my ignorance!!!! J/K

good one criss nice work have you worked out the 320kb for mp3s yet

Yeah, I was all happy, like "the soldiers in Saudi Arabia are digging my site!"

Ah well...

Chris wrote:

Websites get visited by an amazing amount of non-human visitors. They could be search engines that read you page to determine placement, or spammers whose "bots" try to post links in your Guestbook. Colin has just put in place some updates to the site traffic report system to filter all these out, so if you see a page view or a visit, you can be sure it is from a living, breathing fan, not a spam bot from Saudi Arabia.

"Unique Visitors" are also more accurate now. Previously, we relied on IP addresses to determine unique visitors (this is how most stats programs work). Because some large internet providers like AOL share IP addresses for groups of people, it could result in inaccurate unique visitor numbers.

As per many member requests, we stopped logging all your visits that happen via the control panel (you can still test stats by going directly to your URL though).

Next, we improved the speed of displaying stats, so you can see visitors as soon as 5 minutes after they hit your page.

Finally, we updated the location database, so going forward, you will have fewer "unknown" visitors (this update will only take effect at the end of the week).

The net result will be that some members have reduced traffic numbers (especially those of you with guestbook pages hit by spammers). We figure it is better to provide you with the most accurate numbers rather than just boost your ego with inflated, but inaccurate visits. Let us know what you think!

I'm going to miss the warm cuddly feeling I got when I discovered that someone from Istanbul read my two blog postings 438 times in 4 minutes. But I guess it is better this way.

DratironMusic wrote:

I'm going to miss the warm cuddly feeling I got when I discovered that someone from Istanbul read my two blog postings 438 times in 4 minutes. But I guess it is better this way.

Thats the way ... uh huh uh huh ...I like it! Cool .. Good job.. I didn't think anyone in Saudi Arabia liked funk music! Another reason I'm glad I found BZ.

I'm so lonely. Most of my hits were coming from South America and the United Kingdom. I feel more secure with the change; however, I'm still getting hits to my guestbook from an unknown source.

Well done. But I'd LOVE to get rid of those bot stats
altogether. It would be nice if we could control the site
traffic page, though. For example, erase the day's traffic of
an obvious bot.

Excellent, its nice to have more of an accurate report to go by. Thanks for be vigilant on this.

Thanks for the update. Reports are lookin spiffy again!

I was wondering why my traffic was down so much. I wonder if half of my traffic was spam? I hope not! I'm glad to have real fans checking out my site. Thank You

I kinda like having an inflated ego.

on one hand, If I'm getting massive amounts of hits per day, yet my sales don't reflect this it's kind of disturbing. but on the other hand, if I'm getting only 2 or 3 hits a day, I get a little worried as well. Lately my site has been on a rollercoaster ride. thousands of hits one day, and 50 hits the next. I wish I really knew what was going on...

luciddementia wrote:

on one hand, If I'm getting massive amounts of hits per day, yet my sales don't reflect this it's kind of disturbing. but on the other hand, if I'm getting only 2 or 3 hits a day, I get a little worried as well. Lately my site has been on a rollercoaster ride. thousands of hits one day, and 50 hits the next. I wish I really knew what was going on...

The interesting flip side of not having the bots is that it could possibly decrease your SE ranking.

Cres: we are not blocking bots, just not counting their traffic in your stats.

i miss our fans from saudi arabia

My total visits were at 173 last month
but now they are at 104... why is that?

YAY!!! Now I really feel invisible!

Chris wrote:

Cres: we are not blocking bots, just not counting their traffic in your stats.

Thanks for the clarification, dear.

Ok, now we can cancel the tour of Saudi Arabia. Anyone want to buy a flak jacket?

Chris excellent work to you and your techie team!

This is an awesome major enhancement. Thanks Bandzoogle - you guys are the best!

I did notice that the home page stopped registering in the Site Traffic stats. Any reason for that?

The changes sound great! The Site Traffic was such a great surprise when I signed up; I had no idea it was there!! However, mine is wacky as ever. It is not registering and hasn't been for a week now. It isn't showing that I visited my site, or that I linked to my site today. So Thank you for your ingenuity and could it translate onto my site too!!?

Saudi Arabia soundz cool!

Wow, I thought the numbers were lower because we have not had any news lately or tours. This explains it. Thank you for the accurate numbers.

davinarobinson wrote:

Well done. But I'd LOVE to get rid of those bot stats
altogether. It would be nice if we could control the site
traffic page, though. For example, erase the day's traffic of
an obvious bot.

That's a good suggestion. More work for the BZ guys, but if you could customize your own Site Traffic page, even just slightly, it would be cool.

Well there goes our exciting perception that we were getting from so many visits. Down to square one again.

Thanks for the realistic outlook. Now I can truly feel confident that we are getting real people.

Hehehe, I guess we all were convinced we had major success in Saudi Arabia... Back to reality and a drop in traffic (ah well, hard work will eventually pay off)

I all of a sudden, sadly feel less popular.

I have noticed many fewer hits on the tracker. One of the sites that is famous for directing people to us is no longer registering in "links from other sites". How many of the "spammers" are really legitimate sites?

Thanks

Has this changed again? All my stats for December are totally different than they were 2 days ago.

I believe what your seeing is more corrections. I've been in contact with BZ because while this original post was up my stats were going even more crazy then usual. I had 2800 hits in a day for instance. They seemed to have fixed the problem further now and I've noticed that my most wild days of inaccurate hits are going away retroactively, which is great. It seems like things are going well with the Site Traffic from what I can see, at this point.

Less hits, but they are much more accurate and therefor easier to gain real information from.

stevelaurie wrote:

Has this changed again? All my stats for December are totally different than they were 2 days ago.

They were working on it again Monday.

I've been bumming about how few human visitors I get (2 - 5/day) verses how many I thought I got (100-130/day). I went to another music website and viewed the active users. Most of them were robots too. Internet - good news is you get to showcase yourself all over the world. Bad news - so does every one else. Oh well, guess I'll get a day job. Oh right, I live in Michigan where there are no jobs.

yup, we had to close more holes, and then patch the results from December retroactively. Once spammers know that a server has a bunch of important sites (especially those with guestbooks and email addresses), it gets constantly bombarded with spam attempts. We're near the point where spam visitors are completely blocked, so a visit means a human being clicked on your site, rather than an automated bot.

We really appreciate the improvement....however we are saddend that our actual visits are much less than what we expected. At first we thought it was our promotion efforts

Poeticblack; the amount of visitors you have is directly proportional to other promotional efforts. If you do a show, plaster your address everywhere. Add it to your myspace page; tell people to go there to get a free track/beat, etc.

I do notice that your visitors are on average staying 10 minutes, which is likely 10 times longer than those that hit your myspace page, for example. Visits may be lower, but they are quality visitors who are genuinely checking out your stuff.

After reading all these disappointments in this thread, Chris, maybe you should post a sign or banner on the homepage of BZ reading, "Please check ego at the door"

That's funny... I was getting paranoid when I saw so many visits from Saudi Arabia and then Washington, DC!!! I thought big bro was all over my shit!

just great
always had that problem
g

poeticblack wrote:

We really appreciate the improvement....however we are saddend that our actual visits are much less than what we expected. At first we thought it was our promotion efforts

Yeah..In November I had a total of over 700 visits, I had 55 total in December since the changes..Makes me wanna cry, but atleast its REAL visitors now..

Joe

Hi Chris,

The last two days of stats have been bizarre...yesterday it said at the top of the page I had 34 visitors, 34 unique visitors yet EVERYTHING else was ZERO. Showing NO visitors. No actual visits at all. Today it says there have been 60 visitors and 60 unique visitors yet only ONE place shows up.

Can you please let me know what is going on. I have had an established (photography) website for over 10 years and have always had great traffic, not bots as each individual photo that was viewed had a counter on it as well as normal daily stats.

So, whatever you guys have done to 'fix' the bot issue has totally messed up the actual stats as nothing seems to be working right since you first began to fix the problem.

I appreciate your help with whatever it is that is happening now.

Thanks,
Kris

Also been getting probs with site traffic stats for a few weeks. It's showing no hits, behaving erratically etc

Okay....here's the visits location list: See 45 visits from Romania at the top
the scroll down to the end and see View All (16) Hide.

visits location
45 Timisoara, 36 Romania
5 Bangkok, 40 Thailand
4 San Diego, CA United States 92121
3 Munich, 02 Germany
2 Bradenton, FL United States 34212
1 Brooklyn, NY United States 11213
1 Mechanicsville, VA United States
1 Fishkill, NY United States 12524
1 Fresno, CA United States 93722
1 Toronto, ON Canada
1 Markham, ON Canada
1 Napanee, ON Canada
1 Sacramento, CA United States
1 London, H9 United Kingdom
1 Seattle, WA United States
1 Jakarta, 04 Indonesia

View All (16) Hide

Now do ANY of these numbers make ANY sense to anyone working at BZ?

Math may not be your best subject but these numbers are so out of whack as to be redundant.
Why have stats at all if you are incabable of giving us REAL, ACTUAL stats?

Total visitors Unique visitors Average visitors/day Average visit length
70 69 14.0 0.2 minutes

Date Visits Views Plays Downloads PPD Previews PPD Purchases
January 01 2 4 0 0 0 0
January 02 5 10 0 0 0 0
January 03 2 8 0 0 0 0
January 04 1 3 0 0 0 0
January 05 0 0 0 0 0 0

Kris,

It is very, very, very difficult to block out all false visitors. It is the same as blocking all spam messages. We can filter stuff out, but it is not possible to be 100%.

In terms of your previous site that had a counter on it, unless they have spent considerable effort (as we have) those counts contained spam bots as well. A counter doesn't prevent anything by itself.

Clearly, if you are not promoting yourself in Romania, those hits are from a spam bot. If you want more details, please contact us via the HELP tab.

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the reply....I sent an email to the 'help' section. Here's my dilemma. As I noted in yesterday's post with actual numbers from my stats, which were respectively:
71 Visitors: 70 Unique visitors: etc..etc...

TODAY the numbers are even more whacked out:
Total visitors Unique visitors Average visitors/day Average visit length
15 13 2.5 1.0 minutes

So it has gone from 71 - it was actually 74 last night...then today I only have
15 visitors: 13 Unique visitors etc..etc...

WHILE I still have the 19 locations including the 45 from Romania. Yes, I agree the 45 Romania are bots.

But do you see my point in that the numbers are horribly out of whack from one day to the next, even from a few hours to the next. The numbers at the top do not reflect the same numbers at the bottom and so on. THAT is what I am trying to get you guys to fix.
The numbers are all over the place making no sense at all.

I do apoligise for complaining but I just signed up for a year with you guys and want to get the stats right. Otherwise I love BZ!

Thank you for your help,
Kris

Hi Kris,

I don't have a record of you contacting us. Please use the HELP tab and we can check it out.

Hi Chris,

I sent the email to help a few days ago....however there IS good news!!!

Today, the number of visits (19) DOES correspond to the number of visits at the bottom,(the place where we can click and see who came from where for how long)....the number of visitors to the right of the map says 21 which would include the two bots: Romania and Thailand.

So...perhaps we are on the road to recovery with stats that make sense. Hopefully the problem has been resolved.

I thank you once again for your help.

Best regards,
Kris

I didn't read if there is a topic. Just wanted to say the support staff here is awesome. Great Job Guys. Site runs really smoothe.

I agree, Chris has been great about helping me with a stat problem. It's nice to know that the support staff are actually available and helpful so quickly. Kudos all around BZ!

sounds like you are on it. thanks

Darn, I thought the traffic just meant our band was huge in Slovakia! Kidding aside, great updgrade, those bot visits really skewed the numbers. Thanks for the improvement!

Thanks for resolving this issue. I had e-mailed the admin. shortly after we became members expressing my concern about our number of likely inaccurate hits. Thanks again.