[Plugin: WP125] Statistics

It’s very likely the case, but the question is: how can it be stopped? Google generally doesn’t pay attention to any attempts to not follow a link.

Perhaps I could implement some logic to detect Googlebot and not increment the counter if it follows an ad link? I might be able to do that sometime in a future release.

Would adding a “nofollow” or “noindex” to the link prevent this? I mean, to some degree I think the plugin should do that anyway because these are advertisements, not part of editorial. Would that prevent this from happening?

The links are already tagged with rel=”nofollow”. Google does not pay attention to this directive any further than stopping PageRank from being passed. The robot still “clicks” through the link anyway, following it’s relentless quest to catalog every page on the internet.

However, Google’s and Yahoo’s spiders identify themselves as “GoogleBot” and “Slurp,” respectively. It probably would be possible to implement a user-agent check that would disable the hit counter when Google or Yahoo visit.

I don’t think this issue is well-addressed.

The inflated numbers don’t give me any indication at all of the number of actual clicks. And are probly higher than the total number of all the spiders hitting my site.

Is there any other way of getting an actual reading?

any further progress on this?

Another nudge to get this resolved…

Otherwise, a super useful plug-in; particularly *because* of the click tracking… although not if it’s inaccurate!

If nothing else these potential inconsistencies need to be flagged up in the documentation of the plugin so people can make an informed choice.

Thanks