Is Something Going On Here?

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I had sort of noticed this phenomenon in that my most recently posted story had only received a fraction of the hits which I would have normally expected, but I shrugged my shoulders and put it down to the fact that I had just not connected with the audience or I had a bad authorial day when I wrote it.

Then another author bemoaned the same effect on her latest posting and wondered if it was to do with the recent up-grade. So..I went investigating, a la Nancy Drew or Susie and Jeffrey, but more cerebrally and without the mayhem.

Using the recent short story contest I compared the hits with previous contests and found that there does indeed seem to be a much lower general hit count than for previous contests. Most of the stories, including some from such luminaries as Sue Brown, scored less than 1000. Even what I considered to be top stories were only in the low 1000+ range and only two stories topped 2000, against several well over 3000 in the last Summer Romance competition.

Is this just a new phase in BC patronage and readership or is it somehow connected with the upgrade? Is the volume of stories now being posted pushing recent postings off of the front page so quickly that they have no time to pick up hits or is there something darker and more sinister at work here?

One thing that I think none of us would want is that quality authors become discouraged at a perceived lack of interest in their work, so is there a solution to this problem? That is, if it really is a problem,

Joanne

Comments

Number crunching

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erin's picture

The problem seems to be that not signed in readers are not being counted as efficiently as before because of the caching. Since kudos and comments remain at the same level, approximately, the actual numbers of readers are likely to be the same. I'm not sure what the total difference is in counts in, but it can be significant.

And actually, like at the end of most contests, story submissions are down this week.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

IIRC, back before the

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IIRC, back before the upgrade, I often had problems with incomplete page loads. By that I mean some page elements, such as graphics or parts of the sidebars, didn't load and resulted in an incomplete, badly formatted page. When that happened, I had to reload the page, sometimes several times. Now, after the upgrade, that almost never happens.

So if other users had similar experiences, the lower hits could actually be a result of the site running better. The missing hits are ones that didn't represent real reads.

Kris

{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}

I will say that in the last

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I will say that in the last couple of weeks, there have been a lot fewer stories that are the kind(s) that I'm interested in. That doesn't make them bad - just not right for me.

I've seen it before - there will be cycles of stories I like, then cycles of those that I don't. In two to four weeks, it'll change again :)

I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.

My "Hits" have come way down

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But my kudos are still quite satisfactory. It's got to be either something is off on the count, or perhaps the lurkers and such have gone elsewhere, and what we have left are the more serious readers? I dunno, but I've been getting some very nice comments, and that tells me somebody is enjoying my stories-which is really what I'm looking for. Oh and the paychecks. What? NO psychecks? Well!

Wren

PS-I love it here. If I could only have one website, this is it.

I Noticed

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Enemyoffun's picture

I noticed that my number of hits have been down significantly compared to my last story chapters but I didn't really think much about it. Numbers go up and down all the time so I just shrugged it off.

I think it's something in the

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I think it's something in the upgrade and the fact that hits tend to grow even after the contest has ended.

On the other hand, I remember getting 1200 hits for soulmates in the first week of the halloween contest, while I got only 600 for dear diary. In my case, I guess I used tags people are less likely to read...
But I noticed the phenomenon too. It wasn't just me, it was everybody. I guess maybe the system counted hits double sometimes before and stopped after the upgrade.

As Erin said

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Angharad's picture

the numbers of hits are down but the kudos remain about the same. My short stories usually hit the 1000 hits mark in 48 hours, it's now taking a week and numbers for Bike are down but the kudos remain roughly the same. The number of comments can vary wildly, though they do tend to die off after a few days.

Angharad

Hits

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My hits tended to be about 4-500 within 48 hours, and they are now struggling to hit 300. Kudos counts remain consistent (30 to 40 a chunk). In other words, the pattern seems to be consistent.

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