How exact is this plugin?

  • Resolved dl292

    (@dl292)


    1 year, 8 months ago

    Hi.

    We have the Popular Posts plugin on a high traffic website. So far so good, although I dont think its accurately reporting the most read posts. For example, it bares no relation to the page visits report in Google Analytics, and it also shows posts (that I know are of low-interest to our users) as having more views than other posts (which I know are of high-interest to our users).

    So is the reporting fairly exact, or a ‘best guess’? How does it know what posts get viewed more than others?

    Thanks

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Thread Starter dl292

    (@dl292)

    Im just thinking, could it be a caching issue? We’re not using any caching plugins, but perhaps there a caching setting on the server (such as Cloudflare has). What do you think?

    Plugin Author Hector Cabrera

    (@hcabrera)

    Hi @dl292,

    This is sort of covered here: Views count different than Jetpack’s?

    TLDR;

    There will always be some level of data variation across views tracking tools due to differences on how these were built / work. In my personal experience GA’s views data is not that different from what WPP reports (but it’s always slightly different).

    If you’re seeing a very noticeable difference between the two there might be something going on (eg. one of the two isn’t able to track some visits for some reason) but without more information it’s hard to say what may be going on.

    Thread Starter dl292

    (@dl292)

    Great, thanks Hector. I will investigate further.

    Could I just ask: How does it track a view. Is there some code which increments by one every time the page loads for example? I presume theres something preventing a user refreshing the page 50 times to automatically inflate the figures?

    Cheers

    Plugin Author Hector Cabrera

    (@hcabrera)

    Is there some code which increments by one every time the page loads for example?

    Yes, that’s exactly how it works.

    I presume theres something preventing a user refreshing the page 50 times to automatically inflate the figures?

    No, there isn’t actually.

    For the plugin to be able to do that it would need to identify the visitor somehow (IP address, cookie, etc.) and for that WPP would need to implement some sort of mechanism to be GDPR compliant, the plugin shouldn’t track any visitor’s viewing activity without their explicit consent (eg. a modal window asking for permission before doing anything).

    WPP is right now 100% fully GDPR compliant precisely because it doesn’t keep track of what visitors do beyond “they saw this, save this view into the database”.

    So, depending on your personal definition of what “exact” means WPP might or might not be that.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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