Statistics

[JacobRain]

I was curious if anyone knows how accurate the views counter is? I assume it is any click to the start of the story, not a count of times someone paged to the very end? The number of votes is consistently less than 1% of the view count.

Thanks
-Jacob

 

[sr71plt]

I don't think the formula for the Views counter has been revealed.

 

[Hypoxia]

Those who know, don't say.

Those who say, don't know.

That's part of the fun here.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Votes will always be much lower than views; most readers don't vote.

My best guess is Views goes up by one for each page that gets visited, unless you page through quickly. But I haven't experimented.

Views and Ratings here are not especially valuable. If you irritate someone, or your story ranks very high, low votes get added to your stories. They sometimes get "swept", though that doesn't seem to be happening at the moment. And no two people agree on what kind of story deserves a low vote - some will forgive bad spelling, some won't; some will blast you if the plot doesn't go the way they wanted or you diss their favorite kink. The overall effect can look pretty random.

Reader feedback is how you know how you're doing. If you get love notes from fans, the rest doesn't matter.

 

[sr71plt]

I think relative view counts are valuable. More valuable than ratings.

 

[TxRad]

Only clicking on the first page seems to increase the views. Clicks on the same story pages after than first one don't seem to count. There is also speculation that 10% of the views may be bots. The bots used to be far worse but have been somewhat curtailed.

1% of the views on votes is about average unless you have a large fan base or you hit the kink just right. It also varies by categories.

Maybe RR will wight in as he seems to have a good handle on this question.

 

[JacobRain]

Thanks for the info guys.

 

[RejectReality]

I haven't done a comparison and evaluation on views in a long time, but I'd guess that 10-15% unfiltered bots and spiders is probably about right now, after the most recent changes. That's based on reports from people, looking at my own numbers, and a little bit of grabbing data points from the hubs/30 day toplist to see if they match up with the individual experiences.

Prior to that, it was between 20-30%, as best as I could suss out from a far more thorough investigation.

Prior to when I looked into it, around the time I stared writing here a decade ago, I'm fairly certain it was higher than that.

I'd say 1% vote to view ratio is probably about average, accounting for variances between the categories. Some categories would have a higher average, and some lower, but across the whole site, that's a reasonable middle ground.

The more stories you have, and the longer they've been around, that number drops, though. Having an overall average of below 1% votes to views is very much the norm with older work. The number of bots, spiders, and re-reads begins tipping the scale lower compared to new readers who will vote over time.

I'm perfectly happy with 0.75% average across all three pen names on mine, considering I have some very long stories in slow categories that have been around for a decade.

 

[JackLuis]

I updated and reorganized my oldest story that had 40 chapters into seven Sagas early in Dec, after reediting it. I started collecting the votes, scores and views every day to get a data base to see how the reorganized story compared with the original.

I still have another 10 days or so before the last Saga has been up a month. So far I've noticed votes are about 1%-0.75% or less of views, and views of the following Saga's about 30-40% of the preceding and views go down a lot after the Saga is off the New board.

Since the whole thing is long (~200K words) I see a few people use Favorite as a book mark. Views of my other stories went up some as well. and I only had one guy Fav another story of mine.

I'm waiting until the last Saga has been up a whole month before I try a detailed analysis.

 

[oggbashan]

Depending on where you look at the figures, views and votes can update at different times.

On a new story, especially a contest story, it is possible but rare for votes to outnumber views temporarily.

 

[lovecraft68]

Views are too vague to really get a grip on.

Ratings can be manipulated both down by trolls and up by 'friends' as well as alts and other games.

I thank favorites is a valuable way to see how the story is faring. Some of them are simple bookmarks and they may cancel as soon as they read, but many are readers who enjoyed enough to save it.

Comments are another good indicator, unfortunately they are even rarer than votes.

I think vote total can be useful to see how a story fared as well granted there's still some shadiness with it, some will be bombs that may eventually be taken away, some might be fives someone just handed you because the liked your other stories, but in general vote total should count.

Comments, favorites, and vote total cannot be affected by trolls. They can't take your comments, remove the fav or steal your votes.

But...this all is subjective to category 12 votes on a fetish story is pretty good, 12 votes on a mom/son story would be seen as low. 150 votes in BDSM seems like a nice total, in mature or incest or LW that would be pretty low

So if people wanted to do the work to find what's average for favs/number of comments and vote total in the category the story is in then compare your story to those numbers that could tell you is it being 'well accepted' by having higher numbers or is it right on target or lower.

With a readership this large and diversified as in there's a reader for every type of story and the categories broken into kink specific if you were to consistently fall short of the average then for whatever reason your material is not seen as hot here or whatever word you want to use.

I'll add even if that's the case there is no reason to stop posting stories here unless pure numbers are your goal. If you enjoy writing, keep writing as long as your happy with what you're doing, that's what counts.

I only brought all this up as its relevant to the topic, otherwise I don't care too much.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Views are too vague to really get a grip on.

Ratings can be manipulated both down by trolls and up by 'friends' as well as alts and other games.

I thank favorites is a valuable way to see how the story is faring. Some of them are simple bookmarks and they may cancel as soon as they read, but many are readers who enjoyed enough to save it.

Comments are another good indicator, unfortunately they are even rarer than votes.

I think vote total can be useful to see how a story fared as well granted there's still some shadiness with it, some will be bombs that may eventually be taken away, some might be fives someone just handed you because the liked your other stories, but in general vote total should count.

Comments, favorites, and vote total cannot be affected by trolls. They can't take your comments, remove the fav or steal your votes.

But...this all is subjective to category 12 votes on a fetish story is pretty good, 12 votes on a mom/son story would be seen as low. 150 votes in BDSM seems like a nice total, in mature or incest or LW that would be pretty low

So if people wanted to do the work to find what's average for favs/number of comments and vote total in the category the story is in then compare your story to those numbers that could tell you is it being 'well accepted' by having higher numbers or is it right on target or lower.

With a readership this large and diversified as in there's a reader for every type of story and the categories broken into kink specific if you were to consistently fall short of the average then for whatever reason your material is not seen as hot here or whatever word you want to use.

I'll add even if that's the case there is no reason to stop posting stories here unless pure numbers are your goal. If you enjoy writing, keep writing as long as your happy with what you're doing, that's what counts.

I only brought all this up as its relevant to the topic, otherwise I don't care too much.

There's no real measure of improvement. Its American Idol scoring. Reuben gets the votes and Clay sells all the CDs.