All members see the view count of their photos on each photo page, Ace Members also see a historical chart of their views over the last 30 days.
Over the last few years we've frequently received spikes in this data when an unknown "bot" or search engine crawler loads every photo in your album and creates these annoying blips in the data.
A few months ago I suggested I could change the logic on the stats so that only real, human logged-in members would count towards your "views" - and most people were on-board with that change.
Today I have implemented this change in the view count logic as I know it frustrates many members and I've finally had enough of chasing these bots down when a new one seems to be invented every few days.
Hopefully this will completely eliminate spikes from occurring in the data from now on.
What this means for members is that you'll likely see a drop in the number of views your photos receive because it will no longer count the bots (good) but it will also exclude any genuine not-logged-in people who look at your photos (for example if you share them on Facebook and someone clicks and views it on our website, that view will not be counted).
I hope everyone is accepting of this change, and those that aren't understand why I've made this choice.
Happy photographing!
Reading this post and the linked conversation from a few months ago led to me a thought: Would it be possible to have an additional privacy option that's "community only", which would allow photos to be viewed by any and only logged in members?
I know lots of folks share links to wider audiences, but I'd love to have the option to keep my photos more private from the bots and real human lurkers out there. (I sort of achieve this effect now by posting photos as public and then restricting to approved followers after a few months with anyone following my project approved). Just food for thought - no urgency to address it or respond. Thanks!
Great idea @kuva
For everything you do to make this site great ππ
This is the most fab fun project, with a truly wonderful community of kind - caring people.