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Question about Pbase Stats

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dhphoto
 
Posts: 16

Question about Pbase Stats

Post Sun Sep 28, 2014 7:48 am


Hi all, first post here, please be gentle

When I look at the stats of how many people have seen my galleries they make no sense to me.

For example on 18th September the bar chart indicates 5 viewings, but on the right hand side a total of seven different galleries are shown as having been viewed and if I click on those galleries a total of over 20 shots were actually viewed on that day.

Why don't the numbers tally up? Which is right?

TIA

David

richo
 
Posts: 247

Re: Question about Pbase Stats

Post Mon Sep 29, 2014 9:06 pm


Not sure why that is, but I have found using Google Analytics is a much more robust and accurate way to track traffic.

dhphoto
 
Posts: 16

Re: Question about Pbase Stats

Post Tue Sep 30, 2014 8:08 am


How do you do/install/use that?

amoxtli
 
Posts: 3296
Location: San Diego, California

Re: Question about Pbase Stats

Post Tue Sep 30, 2014 2:58 pm


Hi,

The question of stats has been brought up many times, and as far as I know no satisfactory answer has ever been found as to the accuracy of PBase stats. If you go to the main Question & Answers Page and put in "Stats" in the box labelled "Search this forum..." you will get over 1,000 posts on the subject.

To install Google Analytics go to your profile page, then "edit your account settings" and then "Plugins". If you don't have a Google account hit "learn more about google analytics" and go from there.

Good Luck,

Walter
Walter Otto Koenig Architectural Photography: http://www.wokoenig.net

General Photography: http://www.wokoenig.com

Pacific Photographic Society: http://www.pacificphoto.net

dhphoto
 
Posts: 16

Re: Question about Pbase Stats

Post Tue Sep 30, 2014 3:33 pm


Thanks for that.

WHY hasn't Pbase fixed this?? If we pay for the use of stats we should have working stats!

richo
 
Posts: 247

Re: Question about Pbase Stats

Post Tue Sep 30, 2014 6:45 pm


Getting and then adding the Google Analytics tracking code to your account is the first step as Walter indicated. I must confess setting up your Google Analytics reporting and really understanding how to use it does take some time. I had to set one up for a contract, so that gave me to "paid" training time. And I agree that for a quick look the pbase stats are better if only they were truly accurate.

The lingering "elephant in the room" question is: Is anyone still working at Pbase? Is there still a paid staff?

amoxtli
 
Posts: 3296
Location: San Diego, California

Re: Question about Pbase Stats

Post Tue Sep 30, 2014 7:33 pm


Hell Again,

At one point I used google analytics, statcounter and sitemeter because I knew the PBase stats were incorrect. None of the stats of these three programs ever matched and they certainly did not match the Pbase stats which always seemed to be pleasingly optimistic. I have stopped worrying about this, though I do agree with dhphoto that it would be nice if we had stats that were accurate. By the way, discussion on the subject goes back to 2003.

As for the "elephant in the room" question brought up by richo, I think the elephant may have left the building as goetagging has not worked since November of last year. The last time PBase staff commented on this was on 09 Dec 2013. The silence is deafening.
Walter Otto Koenig Architectural Photography: http://www.wokoenig.net

General Photography: http://www.wokoenig.com

Pacific Photographic Society: http://www.pacificphoto.net

sthuman
 
Posts: 97

Re: Question about Pbase Stats

Post Wed Oct 01, 2014 3:33 am


I don't actually know in this case, but you may have mentioned the cause of the differences. You said you see how many people visited, then say how many views various galleries or images had. As I say, I don't know how pbase does it, but it's quite typical of stats systems to give two different numbers. The number of "people", which would actually be the number of unique IP addresses, and then the number of times a gallery or page or image has been viewed. So one person could view 10 galleries and you'd have two numbers. Maybe someone knows what the stated numbers actually mean on pbase, but that's one way you can explain the differences. Or maybe the whole stat system is wonky?

dhphoto wrote:Hi all, first post here, please be gentle

When I look at the stats of how many people have seen my galleries they make no sense to me.

For example on 18th September the bar chart indicates 5 viewings, but on the right hand side a total of seven different galleries are shown as having been viewed and if I click on those galleries a total of over 20 shots were actually viewed on that day.

Why don't the numbers tally up? Which is right?

TIA

David

dhphoto
 
Posts: 16

Re: Question about Pbase Stats

Post Wed Oct 01, 2014 6:56 am


Thanks for the replies, it's intersting stuff (I must be a secret statto)

I managed to get Google Analytics to sort of work, the first day's tally is accurate it seems.

One question from an HTML idiot: how do I easily put the code I need on every page? I can't do that individually it would take weeks

mardoli
 
Posts: 589

Re: Question about Pbase Stats

Post Wed Oct 01, 2014 9:59 am


dhphoto wrote:Thanks for the replies, it's intersting stuff (I must be a secret statto)

I managed to get Google Analytics to sort of work, the first day's tally is accurate it seems.

One question from an HTML idiot: how do I easily put the code I need on every page? I can't do that individually it would take weeks


From your profile page
Edit your account settings-->plugins
The code will be automatically put in every page.
Hope it can help
ImageImage
"Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing."
~Oscar Wilde~

dhphoto
 
Posts: 16

Re: Question about Pbase Stats

Post Wed Oct 01, 2014 12:18 pm


Thanks very much, that's a great help!

One more question and then I'll go away, Can you set the Google Analytics up to show WHICH web pages have been viewed or just the total number of viewings?

TIA

richo
 
Posts: 247

Re: Question about Pbase Stats

Post Wed Oct 01, 2014 4:12 pm


Yes...you have to do a content drilldown. You can even do things like determine where people enter and where they exited. Also you can check what type of browser they are using.
Like I said it takes some learning curve to master all that Google Analytics can do. See this page for some resources. There are some YouTube videos as well.
https://support.google.com/analytics/an ... 3001?hl=en

dhphoto
 
Posts: 16

Re: Question about Pbase Stats

Post Thu Oct 02, 2014 9:46 am


Thanks very much, most helpful

dhphoto
 
Posts: 16

Re: Question about Pbase Stats

Post Sat Oct 04, 2014 8:37 am


One further question please:

I have successfully installed Google Analytics and am getting some data through but I can't actually see which Pbase pages people are looking at, when I drill down I just get a link in the format name\picnumber which, when I click on it says it can't display the image, just the opening page with "Non-existent gallery specified in URL. Displaying dhphoto's root gallery." at the top.

Any way round this?

P.S I should add the data I am getting bears little or no resemblance to what the Pbase stats say!

richo
 
Posts: 247

Re: Question about Pbase Stats

Post Tue Oct 07, 2014 12:07 am


For reason that I have yet to debug when I click to view the link in Google Analytics to one of my images on Pbase, I end with a malformed link. Have you looked closely at the actual URL to see if it is malformed? For me it is probably the way I configured that property, because I do not get the same result on my other sites.

Here is an example of what I mean: http://www.pbase.com/richo/richo/image/124301464
The correct url should be: http://www.pbase.com/richo/image/124301464.

The problem appears to be related to how Google tracks subfolders/directories for website urls. The tracking code has to be modified to include:
//Tracking Code Customizations Only
Code: Select all
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-12345-1']);
_gaq.push(['_setCookiePath', '/myBlog']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);


But the Pbase code is:
Code: Select all
<script type="text/javascript">
        _uacct = "UA-12345-1";
        urchinTracker();
</script>


The Pbase code is actually deprecated and given the lact of response from anyone from the Pbase team to any of the recents posts on anything that I have read, I doubt this will get updated anytime soon.

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