Odd stats

[bondanon]

Statistics swirl around us these days. Some are world-shattering. As they force us to look inward I’ve a question about some which aren’t.
In fairness my obsession started before the most recent horrors. About a year ago I started taking more interest in my story stats (I have 13 stories published on lit, my most recent submission declined - I’m working on that) so I started recording them daily - does anyone else share this fetish!
I started by hand, but soon discovered that downloading from Lit (how handy!) and importing into sheets was a lot easier, delivering the daily hit much faster.
But to the question. Most of my stories get one to five hits daily, a few get more, up to 10-12, One seems to have taken off in the last few weeks though, 300, 400, today 553. Total for all the rest today was 36.
These days one hesitates to use the term ‘viral’ for anything but the real thing, but this is weird! I’d love to think that the story is so much better than my others (it has my second best rating, 4.73) but I find that hard to believe, especially since it’s the first of a series, and none of the others have taken off this way (the story getting the hits is part 1, 'Ginny Awakens', the rejection is all the way up to part 8)
Perhaps it’s the cheeky series title, ‘Incipiunt Vitae Novae’. But if that's it I’d have expected at least a comment or two, or maybe a flame. Nothing!
Or is it just some search engine arcanity going on?
Thoughts...

 

[ElectricBlue]

Depending on category, you can expect one vote per hundred views, one comment per thousand - as a rough guide.

Your stories are slow arriving - but folk are odd: they'll often look at a recent chapter and ignore older ones. It's folk opening your latest story, I reckon, not search bots.

 

[bondanon]

Depending on category, you can expect one vote per hundred views, one comment per thousand - as a rough guide.

Your stories are slow arriving - but folk are odd: they'll often look at a recent chapter and ignore older ones. It's folk opening your latest story, I reckon, not search bots.

Thanks electricblue! BTW, I'm impressed. You're certainly prolific - I'll be digging in soon!
One thing though. I'm used to getting a lot of daily hits (not 553, but 200-300 or so) on stories just published, but I published the one suddenly getting the hits nearly two years ago!

 

[Bramblethorn]

Thanks electricblue! BTW, I'm impressed. You're certainly prolific - I'll be digging in soon!
One thing though. I'm used to getting a lot of daily hits (not 553, but 200-300 or so) on stories just published, but I published the one suddenly getting the hits nearly two years ago!

That's peculiar. Unless it's recently made its way onto something like a category toplist, I'd guess that some other site has linked to it, or that a bot is visiting it repeatedly.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

That's peculiar. Unless it's recently made its way onto something like a category toplist, I'd guess that some other site has linked to it, or that a bot is visiting it repeatedly.

It's also possible Lit has linked it in as a story 'like' another that's currently popular. Impractically hard to tell without access to the web server logs, which of course Lit doesn't make available.

 

[lovecraft68]

I've never followed them that closely.

When I was newer here I went through the phase of being excited over a red H or wondering why one story scored higher than another in the same category

But after awhile I just focused on the writing and the numbers would come or they wouldn't.

 

[NotWise]

I keep track of story stats the same way you do. The views get a boost each time I post a popular story, but otherwise they settle down to 14-15 views per day per story, with stories in busier categories getting more and stories in slow categories getting few or none.

Having an old story jump to hundreds of views/day without a story recently published is unusual. It would be interesting to know what's going on.

 

[lovecraft68]

I keep track of story stats the same way you do. The views get a boost each time I post a popular story, but otherwise they settle down to 14-15 views per day per story, with stories in busier categories getting more and stories in slow categories getting few or none.

Having an old story jump to hundreds of views/day without a story recently published is unusual. It would be interesting to know what's going on.

Maybe it showed up on the similar stories list of a new popular story?

Or maybe just bots...

 

[Saffyre]

When I was newer here I went through the phase of being excited over a red H or wondering why one story scored higher than another in the same category
.

I’m new to submitting stories although I’ve been reading them for about three years. I’ve submitted four so far, the first about ten weeks ago. I’m not a fast writer and the second and third were near completion when I submitted the first one. They’re doing okay except for my last story, the fourth.

Because I’m new I’m checking them daily and when they first appear every hour or so, except during the night, although if I wake up in the early hours I can’t resist it. Perhaps everyone does it when they begin.

My last appeared yesterday and I will admit, in my haste to send it in, I didn’t check it thoroughly enough and there are silly errors. I’m going to send an edit. I’m disappointed because although it has received twentyone votes, four of them have been 1’s. I’m hoping by the time it leaves the new stories those four will have been swept away but I don’t know how the system works.

I know Lovecraft68 has said he doesn’t keep a check but do other experienced writers check or not

https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=5317936&page=submissions

 

[RelentlessOnanism]

I’m new to submitting stories although I’ve been reading them for about three years. I’ve submitted four so far, the first about ten weeks ago. I’m not a fast writer and the second and third were near completion when I submitted the first one. They’re doing okay except for my last story, the fourth.

Because I’m new I’m checking them daily and when they first appear every hour or so, except during the night, although if I wake up in the early hours I can’t resist it. Perhaps everyone does it when they begin.

My last appeared yesterday and I will admit, in my haste to send it in, I didn’t check it thoroughly enough and there are silly errors. I’m going to send an edit. I’m disappointed because although it has received twentyone votes, four of them have been 1’s. I’m hoping by the time it leaves the new stories those four will have been swept away but I don’t know how the system works.

I know Lovecraft68 has said he doesn’t keep a check but do other experienced writers check or not bother?

I don’t know whether I'd say I'm experienced, but I do check my scores every day. I know people say you shouldn’t obsess over them, and I try not to do that, but I do keep an eye on them. I'm a little bit sceptical about these authors who say they don't care completely. They may not care as much as some of us do, but I'm sure they care just a little bit.

 

[RejectReality]

I used to check quarterly, but that changed to annually in 2016 when the volume of data I had to manually copy got too cumbersome and time consuming.

It's infinitely easier now with the quick CSV download, but I'm out of the habit, so I've never resumed more frequent tracking.

As to the genesis of the thread, that sounds like a poorly written bot getting caught in an infinite loop.

I’m new to submitting stories although I’ve been reading them for about three years. I’ve submitted four so far, the first about ten weeks ago. I’m not a fast writer and the second and third were near completion when I submitted the first one. They’re doing okay except for my last story, the fourth.

Because I’m new I’m checking them daily and when they first appear every hour or so, except during the night, although if I wake up in the early hours I can’t resist it. Perhaps everyone does it when they begin.

My last appeared yesterday and I will admit, in my haste to send it in, I didn’t check it thoroughly enough and there are silly errors. I’m going to send an edit. I’m disappointed because although it has received twentyone votes, four of them have been 1’s. I’m hoping by the time it leaves the new stories those four will have been swept away but I don’t know how the system works.

I know Lovecraft68 has said he doesn’t keep a check but do other experienced writers check or not bother?

 

[SimonDoom]

Since April 2017 I've maintained an Excel spreadsheet on which I keep stats about my stories. I don't download them every single day, but probably on average about three times per week.

Over the years I've observed stories getting unusually numbers of views or sudden spikes in views, which I've attributed to a few reasons:

1. Bots. I have story that about did pretty well and was getting perhaps 80-100 views per day, but suddenly received about 10,000 views in one day. This was about a year after it had been published. So it had to be a bot or something like that.

2. If a story gets nominated for a contest, it can suddenly acquire more visibility and its views will spike. This happened to a story of mine that had been getting relatively few votes per day but suddenly, about seven months after publication, was nominated for the annual story award in its category. Suddenly it began receiving far more views. I don't see how this would apply to a two-year old story unless they are that far behind in nominating stories. You might check to see if this applies to your story.

3. A story's views may increase if it works its way up a toplist, gaining more visibility.

4. A story's views may increase if it is favorited often enough that it starts to show up on "similar stories" lists at the end of other popular stories.


Without having more information it's impossible to determine why this happened.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

... although it has received twentyone votes, four of them have been 1’s.
https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=5317936&page=submissions

I'm curious about how you know what the individual votes were. You're not the first person to mention the value of individual votes. The only ones I can ever figure out are when the very first scores arrive and they're all the same. A score of three with five votes or a score of five with three votes is easy enough to figure out, but I don't understand how you can tell when the number of votes is higher and the votes are mixed. Is there a way to look at the voting spread?

 

[NotWise]

I'm curious about how you know what the individual votes were. You're not the first person to mention the value of individual votes. The only ones I can ever figure out are when the very first scores arrive and they're all the same. A score of three with five votes or a score of five with three votes is easy enough to figure out, but I don't understand how you can tell when the number of votes is higher and the votes are mixed. Is there a way to look at the voting spread?

You back-calculate the vote from the rating and the change in votes, which is most easily done in a spreadsheet.

You keep a running record of (at least) the rating and the number of votes. I also record the time when I recorded the rating and the number of views at that time, but those aren't necessary.

The total number of *'s your story has been given is the rating X the votes. The number of *'s normally increases between votes unless there has been a sweep. The change in the number of *'s since the previous vote is the total stars voted since the last record.

If there's been only one vote, then that tells you what the vote was. If you get n votes and the total number of *'s increased by 5 X n, then you got n 5* votes. Similarly, if you get n votes and the total number of *'s increased by n, then you got n 1* votes.

There are two other cases in which you can tell unequivocally what was voted even if there's more than one vote. If you have n new votes and the total number of stars increased by 5 X n - 1, then you got one 4* votes and n-1 5* votes. If you have n new votes and the total number of stars increased by n+1 then you got one 2* vote and n-1 1* votes.

Any other combination leaves you guessing at what the votes were -- you only know the total.

Rounding limits the maximum number of votes you can use in the calculation to ~100. At higher vote totals you will get errors. Also, if you round off the intermediate steps in the calculation, then you'll be limited to ~50 votes, so don't round things off.

 

[bondanon]

I keep track of story stats the same way you do. The views get a boost each time I post a popular story, but otherwise they settle down to 14-15 views per day per story, with stories in busier categories getting more and stories in slow categories getting few or none.

Having an old story jump to hundreds of views/day without a story recently published is unusual. It would be interesting to know what's going on.

Most curious to know which categories are busy and which are slow - how does one find that sort of thing out?

 

[Bramblethorn]

It's also possible Lit has linked it in as a story 'like' another that's currently popular. Impractically hard to tell without access to the web server logs, which of course Lit doesn't make available.

That could be, though it'd probably have to be on a whole bunch of stories to get hundreds of views per day.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

You back-calculate the vote from the rating and the change in votes, which is most easily done in a spreadsheet.

I had to read that three times to get it - not because your explanation was lacking, but because my brain cells kept screaming, "Nooooooooo!" They do that in the presence of math. I see what you're saying about doing it based on the change rather than on the total.

It's too bad that there's not a way to just view the raw voting data. Seeing 100 threes would tell me something much different than seeing 50 ones and 50 fives.

Thanks for the explanation.

 

[NotWise]

Most curious to know which categories are busy and which are slow - how does one find that sort of thing out?

There are at least two ways of being "busy." Some categories get far more stories than others, and some get more views than others. Real slow categories don't get many stories or many views.

The "Site Contents" page (the one that lists all the categories, among other things) shows a parenthesized number after the category description. That is the number of stories in the category. The current number of stories/day is generally consistent with the number of stories in the category. So EC has the largest number of stories, followed by I/T. Loving Wives, BDSM and NonCon round out the top five.

The ranking by the amount of reader activity is different. I think it was 8letters who posted a ranking of the categories by reader activity. I/T is the most active category in those terms. I think LW is second. EC, while it gets a lot of stories, has relatively little reader activity.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Most curious to know which categories are busy and which are slow - how does one find that sort of thing out?

Another clue is to look at the category front page, and note the submission date of the last one on the list. That gives you an idea how many days it takes for a new story to drop down thirty slots, and from that it's a simple calculation how many stories get posted in that category per week/per month.

 

[SimonDoom]

Here's the link to the thread 8Letters started with analysis about which categories of stories receive the most views:

https://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=1488161&highlight=8letters

 

[Saffyre]

I’m new to submitting stories although I’ve been reading them for about three years. I’ve submitted four so far, the first about ten weeks ago.

My latest appeared yesterday and I will admit, in my haste to send it in, I didn’t check it thoroughly enough and there are silly errors. I’m going to send an edit. I’m disappointed because although it has received twentyone votes, four of them have been 1’s. I’m hoping by the time it leaves the new stories those four will have been swept away but I don’t know how the system works.

Is it common for stories with a low rating to get less views? My latest story was published three days ago and received seventeen votes on the first day and was on 4.65 until it received four 1’s in succession dropping it to 3.96. It’s still on the first page and in the last two days it’s got back to 4.12 but the views have been negligible. Is this common?

 

[Bramblethorn]

Is it common for stories with a low rating to get less views? My latest story was published three days ago and received seventeen votes on the first day and was on 4.65 until it received four 1’s in succession dropping it to 3.96. In the last two days it’s got back to 4.12 but the views have been negligible. Is this common?

A low rating will hurt views. But even with a good rating, as soon as your story gets pushed off the first couple of pages of New Stories, your views will fall off sharply. After a week, it slows to a trickle.

The best solution for most of these problems is to write more stories. When you post a new story, it's a free ad for your old stories. I see a noticeable bump in views on my oldest stuff when I post new things.

 

[MohanSingh]

How do you know what ratings have been left or when your story has last been rated? Or is it just guesswork from the rating?

 

[Bramblethorn]

How do you know what ratings have been left or when your story has last been rated? Or is it just guesswork from the rating?

You refresh your story stats obsessively and note when the numbers change.

 

[SimonDoom]

How do you know what ratings have been left or when your story has last been rated? Or is it just guesswork from the rating?

The Site doesn't notify you when you've received a rating, but you can download all the stats on a daily basis and that will give you a pretty good idea.