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davedol

Do comment spam-bots skewer “unique visitor” stats?

Posted by davedol • 6/06/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: bots, spam, Stats, unique, visitors

We measure a blog’s success by its unique visitors. But when we factor in spam-comment-bots’s auto-commenting, don’t these get counted with our unique visitor stats? Collectively, isn’t a blog's popularity just an illusion generated by spammers?

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User Comments

  1. davedol
    6/06/09
    davedol
    I looked at my unique visitors stats recently, and I thought it was highly unrealistic. Since I see all my spam comments (click-delete-click-delete), I deducted the spam comments from the total and BINGO! Reality. Reality sucks.
    [reply]
  2. timethief
    6/06/09
    timethief
    I'm not quite sure what you mean so forgive me if I'm off-base. Everything on a blog contributes to the brand. These auto-generated comments don't make it through my moderation. What astonishes me is seeing them posted on other blogs.

    I found your blog on my Google feedreader .... [rolls eyes] ... DELETE!
    [reply]
  3. davedol
    6/06/09
    davedol
    TT, it would be nice if hosting services were able to deduct blocked comments (whatever the plugin) from appearing in our unique visitor stats. I don’t know if that is possible. If we could, we’d know how many true unique visitors we get. I guess we get 50% to 90% less unique visitors then we imagine.
    [reply]

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