View Counts Are Down

[SimonDoom]

There's no question about it: view numbers are down at Literotica from what they used to be. I suspect it's a change in the way views are counted, rather than a drop in real views. Probably, the Site employs more stringent filters that are intended to discount "views" that the Site regards as fake, maybe views generated by bots or something. But I don't know for certain. I'm not technically skilled enough to know how that works.

I've monitored Site data, including my own but data generally, for 5 years. 5 years ago, and until not too long ago, the most-viewed story on the 30-day most viewed story list typically would have around 140,000-150,000 views. But today, the most-viewed story on the 30-day list has 91,070 views. That's a huge drop. Another indicator is that 5 years ago the number 250 story on the 12-month most viewed list had about 115,000 views. Now that story has 91,174 views. That's also a very big drop.

I've noticed that the views for my stories on average are not as high within the first 30 days as they were 5 years ago.

I don't think it's alarming. I doubt very much the Site is losing readers. The Site is just counting views in a different way. But it's interesting.

There are still outliers. My hat is off to BuckyDuckman for the story Cum for Austin. That story was published on April 28 last year, and it has over 920,000 views. That is extraordinary. It has over twice the number of views of the number 2 story on the list. Bravo!

 

[BarracudaSwordfish]

My entry in the 'On the Job' event last year had 35,000 plus views after one day and I currently have a record 759 scores on it.

The sequel in this year's event currently has 6,168 after a day and a half and only 32 scores.

They are in the same category, Mature.

 

[Lifestyle66]

I appreciate the results I'm getting for my entry. It's at 11,297 views, with 210 votes for a rate 3.52. But it's in Loving Wives, thus the large number of views and relatively low rating. (It wasn't a BTB story.)

 

[windar]

I think it's not that total readership on the site is down, nor is it a counting artifact, but, rather, that the volume of stories has increased significantly, while the total readership is either stagnant or growing at much slower pace. There are only so many people who want to read erotic stories, rather than watch a porno or play a video game or watch TikTok videos or whatever. And of those who do want to read the stories, they can only read so many before they get bored, sore or fall asleep. More stories divided amongst the same number of readers = fewer reads for any individual story.

I don't think this is true only of Literotica. Other sites are seeing a similar phenomenon. There is simply too much competition for a finite number of eyes.

 

[HeyAll]

I've mentioned this before, but it's harder to have a big story because people stick to the Hubs they like. Before, the New List was the only place to read a new story, now it's split up.

There are also a lot more stories, so more needs to be done to get a reader's attention. You've got to hit the bullseye with the title/description.

Nearly 10 years ago, a mom/son contest story on average gets around 50,000 views in one day, upwards of 75,000. Now, very rare.

But if you submit a mom/son ride story those could still get massive numbers (last year there were three-four, all did big numbers).

 

[BarracudaSwordfish]

There is something off with Favorites and Reading Lists as well.

My submission from yesterday is showing 6 Faves and 5 Bookmarks on my Latest Activity page.

The totals on the Published Story page show 9 and 15 respectively.

 

[NotWise]

There is something off with Favorites and Reading Lists as well.

My submission from yesterday is showing 6 Faves and 5 Bookmarks on my Latest Activity page.

The totals on the Published Story page show 9 and 15 respectively.

One problem is that the numbers in different places are updated at different times and frequencies.

Also, the site is dealing with reader input from two different story pages that treat "favorites" differently. I don't know if that's the cause, but sometimes when I'm alerted that someone's added my story to a list it will count in my works page as a favorite, and sometimes it won't.

Also, my last two stories have had more comments than favorites -- not because the comments are so high, but because the favorites are so low. That might also be because of the different ways the new and old interfaces work. The larger of the two numbers to the right side of the CSV file with story stats is larger, and more in line with past experience.

It's become difficult to say just what counts as a "favorite."

 

[Candy_Kane54]

One problem is that the numbers in different places are updated at different times and frequencies.

Also, the site is dealing with reader input from two different story pages that treat "favorites" differently. I don't know if that's the cause, but sometimes when I'm alerted that someone's added my story to a list it will count in my works page as a favorite, and sometimes it won't.

Also, my last two stories have had more comments than favorites -- not because the comments are so high, but because the favorites are so low. That might also be because of the different ways the new and old interfaces work. The larger of the two numbers to the right side of the CSV file with story stats is larger, and more in line with past experience.

It's become difficult to say just what counts as a "favorite."

I don't usually Favorite every story I like. If it's a series, I'll usually Favorite only part one which gives me a bookmark to the rest of the series. Also, if I am following an author, I'll usually favorite one story of theirs which gives me a bookmark to the rest of their stories. Perhaps, more and more people are following the same paradigm?

 

[TxRad]

Has anyone factored in that Covid restrictions are loosening up so we have less of a captive audience?

 

[NotWise]

My works page notified me this morning that a reader added one of my stories to a reading list. An hour later it notified me again that the reader had added the same story to a reading list. I checked the reader's public profile, and the story is on his list of favorites. Apparently one of those "reading lists" was his favorites list, but my story never got the heart icon or the increment in its favorites count.

 

[SimonDoom]

Has anyone factored in that Covid restrictions are loosening up so we have less of a captive audience?

No, because that has nothing to do with today's statistics versus statistics from 5 years ago pre-COVID.

Plus, I'm not sure how COVID would affect online behavior. I don't think there's any evidence (that I can see) that Lit traffic went up during COVID.

I think HeyAll's hypothesis is the most reasonable one. Lit readers access stories in more diverse ways than before, and there are more stories to choose from. It makes it much harder for one new story to dominate than before. But there are still outliers, every once in a while.

Plus, Lit definitely is doing something.

My works page notified me this morning that a reader added one of my stories to a reading list. An hour later it notified me again that the reader had added the same story to a reading list. I checked the reader's public profile, and the story is on his list of favorites. Apparently one of those "reading lists" was his favorites list, but my story never got the heart icon or the increment in its favorites count.

My perception of what happens is this: Readers mark your story for their "to read" list, and the Site informs you that they've done that. Then, later, they add the story to their "favorites" list, but the Site doesn't inform you of that. You don't get an extra notice after you've been informed that the story was added to the "to read" list. You get just one notice even though the "to read" tag later gets changed to a "favorites" tag. This is the only way I can make sense of the data I see on my My Home page along with the data download I see on my Works page and the numbers I see for the stories on my Works page.

When I look at my My Home page, I see a lot more "To read" icons than "Favorites" icons, but the final numbers indicate that there are many more "favorites" than "to reads." So that's my interpretation of what's going on.

 

[NotWise]

No, because that has nothing to do with today's statistics versus statistics from 5 years ago pre-COVID.

Plus, I'm not sure how COVID would affect online behavior. I don't think there's any evidence (that I can see) that Lit traffic went up during COVID.

The average number of stories/day went up. At it's peak, I think the site was getting about twice as many stories/day as it did before the pandemic. I did see a web traffic report for Lit from early in the pandemic. It indicated a rise, but I think the free web traffic reports may be worth what you pay for them.

I think HeyAll's hypothesis is the most reasonable one. Lit readers access stories in more diverse ways than before, and there are more stories to choose from. It makes it much harder for one new story to dominate than before. But there are still outliers, every once in a while

Plus, Lit definitely is doing something.

I agree with this.

It's difficult to characterize a norm (normal views/story, for instance) when the only data you have are for extremes (most viewed, in this case). HeyAll's explanation is relevant to the extreme, but it doesn't say much about the norm.

My perception of what happens is this: Readers mark your story for their "to read" list, and the Site informs you that they've done that. Then, later, they add the story to their "favorites" list, but the Site doesn't inform you of that. You don't get an extra notice after you've been informed that the story was added to the "to read" list. You get just one notice even though the "to read" tag later gets changed to a "favorites" tag. This is the only way I can make sense of the data I see on my My Home page along with the data download I see on my Works page and the numbers I see for the stories on my Works page.

When I look at my My Home page, I see a lot more "To read" icons than "Favorites" icons, but the final numbers indicate that there are many more "favorites" than "to reads." So that's my interpretation of what's going on.

But in my case, I was informed of both additions to a reading list, about an hour apart.

My main point is that it's hard to say what "favorites" mean any more.

 

[windar]

It's really simple Simon (please excuse the bad pun). There are more sites with more stories competing for a more or less fixed pool of readers. That translates to fewer readers for any given story.

Just as an example, on the main pay site where I publish, there is a Hall of Fame, based on so many sales during the first month. There were typically around 10 or so/year for many years up to 2017. Even I managed to snag one in 2017. Then in 2018 there was 1; in 2019 there were 2 and 2020 and 2021-0. So the fall off began before Covid. Sure, that's a pay site, but the economy was fine in 2018 and 2019 and, at least in the US, with the various stimulus checks and the expenses of going into the office gone, a lot of people had more spendable bucks than they did before the pandemic.

Look, we need to be honest with ourselves. Most everything we can write about in the realm of the erotic has been done and done again. There are 500,000 stories here and god know how many more on tons of other sites. We all want to think we have a unique spin (I try), but realistically, we ought to admit that whatever we do is probably a minor variation on something that's already been done somewhere and the readers may be tired...

 

[SimonDoom]

It's really simple Simon (please excuse the bad pun). There are more sites with more stories competing for a more or less fixed pool of readers. That translates to fewer readers for any given story.

I'm not convinced that the data are the result of Literotica getting a smaller slice of the pie. It might be true, but I'm not sure. I think, based on what I know, that Literotica still is the top erotic story website on the Internet, in terms of traffic and readers. There are more erotic story readers than there were 20 years ago--probably a lot more. The number differences are so dramatic from 5 years ago that I'm inclined to think it's something going on inside the site rather than something going on outside the site.

 

[windar]

I'm not convinced that the data are the result of Literotica getting a smaller slice of the pie. It might be true, but I'm not sure. I think, based on what I know, that Literotica still is the top erotic story website on the Internet, in terms of traffic and readers. There are more erotic story readers than there were 20 years ago--probably a lot more. The number differences are so dramatic from 5 years ago that I'm inclined to think it's something going on inside the site rather than something going on outside the site.

Yes, there are probably more readers than than there were 20 years ago, when most internet connections were dial up. But I'm not sure the readership has increased greatly in the last 5 years. If you hadn't found erotica on line by 2017, what would cause you to discover it in 2022? Sure there are new readers, but there are old readers who lose interest/die/whatever. My contention is that the audience overall isn't growing that much. Not nearly as fast as the number of stories.

Whether or not Lit is the "top" (possibly in quantity, though it's very debatable as far quality) there are many more stories on Lit. Not just new ones, but all the old ones. Take any tag and search now and I guarantee you will get many more hits than you would have gotten 10 years ago.

So, if someone comes here to read a few stories on a given theme, there are simply more choices, so the odds of them picking any given story go down. And as I said, it isn't just Lit. Get out of the bubble and you will see the same things happening elsewhere in the last 5 years (reread my post if that will help)...

 

[ElectricBlue]

The number differences are so dramatic from 5 years ago that I'm inclined to think it's something going on inside the site rather than something going on outside the site.

On the basis that most things digital still obey Moore's Law, and human behaviour typically trends towards gluttony, I'm inclined to agree. There are more stories, more readers. My guess is metadata purification - the site is figuring out ways to filter out false positives - bots, crawlers, and so on.

The depth and range of sweeps suggests that. Remember the alarm a couple of months ago when many of the high roller accounts, those stories with huge numbers of Views and Votes, were stressing that their scores were dropping? I reckon the site has figured out how to find and remove a larger number of spurious votes, using whatever validation criteria the site uses, and a layer of "bad numbers" has been permanently removed - right across the story set.

The thing is, you can't go backwards to a point in time and compare that data point to what it looks like now, after the deep sweeps went through.

 

[windar]

On the basis that most things digital still obey Moore's Law, and human behaviour typically trends towards gluttony, I'm inclined to agree.

Tell that to Netflix. Audiences for anything are finite. Add enough competitors (in the case of Lit it can be other sites or more stories here or both) and the numbers of those on any one product will fall.

 

[NotWise]

Tell that to Netflix. Audiences for anything are finite. Add enough competitors (in the case of Lit it can be other sites or more stories here or both) and the numbers of those on any one product will fall.

Traffic and traffic analysis vary quite a bit. There seems to be some agreement among sources that Lit has recently been pulling in 57M-58M visitors/month. I couldn't find a site that broke things down to market share, but the next largest similar site may be lushstories.com (https://reviewbolt.com/r/literotica.com) with 1.6M visits/month. That means that the traffic on other erotic literature sites could double or triple, and it wouldn't make a dent in Lit's market, or more than a blip in its market share.

The first time I looked at Lit's traffic statistics was probably in 2016. The traffic number I remember from that time was a little under 1M independent visits/day. Call that 30M visitors/month. If that's even close to right, then Lit's traffic has trended pretty solidly upward.

I think that to explain Simon's numbers you need to look somewhere other than traffic counts or market shares. HeyAll's explanation is probably at least part of the stew. Maybe there has been a change in how Lit counts views. The other thing I'll continue to point out is that you can't use data on extremes to characterize normal conditions. Based on the traffic numbers it looks like there probably hasn't been a decline in views.

The reviewbolt article I gave the link to above claims Erotic Coupling (the EC hub) is Lit's most popular page, with almost ten times as many visits as the I/T hub. Take that for what it's worth, I guess.

Edit: And about Netflix ... Their market has flattened over the last few years, but the loss in accounts they reported for the first quarter was caused when they dropped about 800,000 accounts in Russia. Without that, they would have reported a gain.

 

[HeyAll]

Lit gets around 59 million visits per month, according to this.

https://www.similarweb.com/website/literotica.com/#ranking

 

[RejectReality]

Lit gets around 59 million visits per month, according to this.

https://www.similarweb.com/website/literotica.com/#ranking

Which is 4-7X the nearest competitor... which I've always questioned. Sexstories always has high traffic rankings wherever you look it up, but the statistics on the stories don't seem to agree with it. Nifty has no public facing statistics that I can find. Asstr has been the living dead for going on two decades.

Lush and SOL have story statistics more in line with their rankings, and Lit has them by between 10-20X. Between them, they also provide a nice range of rules and readership preferences for stories that either can't be published here or would do poorly here.

==========

I 100% believe it's improvements to the bot/spider filtering, because the drops have happened pretty much overnight, and have never coincided with a drop in traffic rankings or vote/comment/fav totals. Five years ago is probably about five years after the initial large drop. I can remember putting out things like Mom's Stocking Stuffer and getting 100k views in 24 hours. A story now will get 1/3 to 1/2 the recorded views, but otherwise perform identically in any other statistic.