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Are Posterous Fudging Visitor Statistics?

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Re: Are Posterous Fudging Visitor Statistics?

#11

Post by ig1 »

benologist wrote: post #4

They're just counting views in a particularly unrealistic but technically not incorrect way. Seems to be pretty much par for the course, like when twitter announces a billion new users, most of which are probably bots and/or quora.

The test has to be what your users understand that value to mean. I'm betting almost all Posterous users think they're being read by significantly more people than they actually are.

If Posterous can't provide meaningful stats (and I appreciate that filtering out bots may be non-trivial) then they should just avoid providing stats altogether. Bad data is worse than no data as it's much more misleading.

Re: Are Posterous Fudging Visitor Statistics?

#12

Post by duck »

icey wrote: post #8
Xuzz wrote: post #7

(Unrelated/offtopic: is "are" or "is" correct in the title?)

It's a cultural difference. In the US, people refer to the named entity (is). In the UK, they refer to the collection of people that make up the entity (are).

I didn't know that difference and was wondering the same thing, thanks. It is funny how that subtle difference made me read the title like five times to understand it.

Re: Are Posterous Fudging Visitor Statistics?

#13

Post by rantfoil »

Our focus is on building the best product. It so happens to be that we are aware of the issue and recommend that you use Google Analytics for deeper insight into visitors and views.

Here is a bit of how-the-sausage is made, but you wouldn't believe how much of a negative response we got from existing users once we went to a fully JavaScript analytics system. So by sheer volume of user input we made the decision to return to the original http request method of counting views.

We are continuing to look at ways to improve this system, possibly with Mixpanel.

Re: Are Posterous Fudging Visitor Statistics?

#14

Post by benologist »

ig1 wrote: post #11
benologist wrote: post #4

They're just counting views in a particularly unrealistic but technically not incorrect way. Seems to be pretty much par for the course, like when twitter announces a billion new users, most of which are probably bots and/or quora.

The test has to be what your users understand that value to mean. I'm betting almost all Posterous users think they're being read by significantly more people than they actually are. If Posterous can't provide meaningful stats (and I appreciate that filtering out bots may be non-trivial) then they should just avoid providing stats altogether. Bad data is worse than no data as it's much more misleading.

I agree with you, but no company's going to leap forward and be honest about numbers, they're going to use whichever makes them look biggest/growing strongest to their users, investors and competitors, and all the numbers are "right" in some context.

Re: Are Posterous Fudging Visitor Statistics?

#15

Post by ig1 »

rantfoil wrote: post #13

Our focus is on building the best product. It so happens to be that we are aware of the issue and recommend that you use Google Analytics for deeper insight into visitors and views. Here is a bit of how-the-sausage is made, but you wouldn't believe how much of a negative response we got from existing users once we went to a fully JavaScript analytics system. So by sheer volume of user input we made the decision to re…

Do you not think the page view stats are completely misleading your users ?

There's absolutely no indication on Posterous that bots are likely responsible for thousands of the page views shown (which given the long tail nature of Posterous I imagine we're talking about the majority of the page views here for a lot of users).

One user even reported that GA was showing 14 visitors while Posterous was showing 9316:

http://adamriggins.com/posterous-post-views-and-google-analy...

Whenever Posterous has given a response the focus has been on disabled javascript, etc. rather than the fact most of these views are likely generated by bots. For example the email you sent to the user here:

http://www.creativenotice.com/how-posterous-stats-work

Given the values are essentially meaningless why show them to your users at all ?

Re: Are Posterous Fudging Visitor Statistics?

#16

Post by ewjordan »

icey wrote: post #8
Xuzz wrote: post #7

(Unrelated/offtopic: is "are" or "is" correct in the title?)

It's a cultural difference. In the US, people refer to the named entity (is). In the UK, they refer to the collection of people that make up the entity (are).

Interesting, good to know.

How do UK speakers deal with non-named entities? For example:

My family is/are going out to the movie. The class was/were getting restless.

These are common gotchas on the SAT in the US; one of their favorite tricks is using plural country names, like "The United States of America (is/are) ...", where in US English "is" is the correct version. Cheap trick that really only tests whether you've memorized ETS's stance on that particular grammar point, IMO, but that's the SAT for you...

Re: Are Posterous Fudging Visitor Statistics?

#17

Post by ig1 »

benologist wrote: post #14
ig1 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The test has to be what your users understand that value to mean. I'm betting almost all Posterous users think they're being read by significantly more people than they actually are. If Posterous can't provide meaningful stats (and I appreciate that filtering out bots may be non-trivial) then they should just avoid providing stats altogether. Bad data is worse than no data as it's much more misleading.

I agree with you, but no company's going to leap forward and be honest about numbers, they're going to use whichever makes them look biggest/growing strongest to their users, investors and competitors, and all the numbers are "right" in some context.

"Our goal is to be 100% transparent with everything we do at Posterous, especially when it affects your blog and content" -Sachin cofounder, posterous.com

From: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1309849

Re: Are Posterous Fudging Visitor Statistics?

#18

Post by [deleted] »

rantfoil wrote: post #13

Our focus is on building the best product. It so happens to be that we are aware of the issue and recommend that you use Google Analytics for deeper insight into visitors and views. Here is a bit of how-the-sausage is made, but you wouldn't believe how much of a negative response we got from existing users once we went to a fully JavaScript analytics system. So by sheer volume of user input we made the decision to re…

[deleted]

Re: Are Posterous Fudging Visitor Statistics?

#19

Post by ig1 »

ig1 wrote: post #15
rantfoil wrote: post #13

Our focus is on building the best product. It so happens to be that we are aware of the issue and recommend that you use Google Analytics for deeper insight into visitors and views. Here is a bit of how-the-sausage is made, but you wouldn't believe how much of a negative response we got from existing users once we went to a fully JavaScript analytics system. So by sheer volume of user input we made the decision to re…

Do you not think the page view stats are completely misleading your users ? There's absolutely no indication on Posterous that bots are likely responsible for thousands of the page views shown (which given the long tail nature of Posterous I imagine we're talking about the majority of the page views here for a lot of users). One user even reported that GA was showing 14 visitors while Posterous was showing 9316: http…

Also I imagine you're going to get a very large negative response when you switch to a working method that's going to be along the lines of "where have all my visitors gone".

By talking about "deeper insight" rather than just openly admitting the data is just bad you're just delaying the inevitable backlash.

Re: Are Posterous Fudging Visitor Statistics?

#20

Post by epe »

rantfoil wrote: post #13

Our focus is on building the best product. It so happens to be that we are aware of the issue and recommend that you use Google Analytics for deeper insight into visitors and views. Here is a bit of how-the-sausage is made, but you wouldn't believe how much of a negative response we got from existing users once we went to a fully JavaScript analytics system. So by sheer volume of user input we made the decision to re…

Wouldn't simply excluding any http request whose user agent contains "googlebot" from the displayed count make it dramatically more accurate without needing a switch to JS-based analytics?
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