That said, numbers are still that to me. A jumble of numbers with no meaning. But, visually, to me, if I see that number in physical form it hits home.
Everyone knows I try to war-game (but no real time!) so I have a lot of "little guys". I thought "415...means nothing but-" and I then placed 415 figures on the table. Yeah, that is a lot. It shows that my mind just slides over these things. Numbers is numbers.
So, I look at the number of views of CBO by country and I assume they made up the total page views shown. "Assumption is the father of all f*** ups!" as someone once wrote.
Page views today (1207 hrs) -297.
Fair enough.
As I was about to check comments I saw a number that even I could not miss -pageviews for the United States as of 1207 hrs -512.
512???
I wrote down the views by country:
512
119
112
41
36
27
21
18
16
11
913 total
To which I had to ask "WTF???" Now getting a response from Blogger is....well, it is easier to get blood from stone. So I checked forums and this same topic came up in two. Yes, the accuracy of the "Views" counter is beyond question as they do register traffic. The problem, it seems, is that the Total Page Views has a problem.
Some people thought that with their blogs it just meant, with their total, 300 people had viewed so many pages so 1 might have viewed ten pages =10 page views. But someone pointed out, very technically so I did wonder at some point WHAT was going on, why this was wrong. Someone at Blogger (!) noted that total page views per day totals might be shown as "far lower than they actually are".
So I decided to check a few stats from other days and compared them to to totals given for those days.
I have to admit to feeling a bit of a feckin idiot. In certain posts I claimed that views were so bad I thought about chucking the whole thing in as a waste of time. "Total Page Views" for those days were around 400-500. But counting the views by country I found the actual total page views on those days was between 1200 -2,400.
Of course, it does not make that much difference to me because "numbers are numbers" but I did wonder what I was doing wrong!
If you have a Blogger account and you DO get a bit excited by numbers then check your page views by the number of visits and make sure that total at the top of the page is accurate.
The same thing applies to Google+ accounts. My stats there are 1,529,837 views to date. There is a message that these figures "are approximate" and, it appears from what people say, are also low! It explains why Google has made me offers that come with certain peak points reached in views but I've never bothered because the stats are not high enough. In fact, they are higher than shown.
When stats equate to money earned I'll play very close attention. I do wonder, though, how many other bloggers have not noticed this....I get a feeling I may not be the only one. If I am it's just typical -no one tells me anything!
From what I see though , from the pages that I've read , is that the majority decline to place comments , because it looks as if you're doing all the work intellectually whilst even with a keyboard in front of them- yes , you're getting figures - but no written feedback from your viewers . Well , I think you're doing a mind boggling job here Terry and my friend the book searcher , the Peter whom I've mentioned , with many, many hours of being a company director under his belt - his company manufactured oil barrels in Nigeria and Trinidad - before he settled to becoming a book seller and then book searcher in semi-retirement - upon being introduced to your web site , praised your professionalism and the page layout and variety of interesting subject matter . like ourselves he's a fan of Surrealism - he likes Frida Kahlo , I mentioned your soft spot for Dali - and he loved the page on Massimo Belardinelli and his paintings and sculptures . I also introduced him to Moebius and he has become a devoted fan . Chin up mate , people like you ! Like myself , you're a born cynic and take some convincing .
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