The Real Blogger Status

The Stats "Audience" page is now showing a mysterious entry, in the "Pageviews by Countries" list, for some blogs. The list of the top 10 most active countries, for the "Now", "Day", "Week", and / or "Month" lists, for some blogs, includes a non country name - "Unknown Region". The "Unknown Region" entry appears to be associated with a second Stats oddity, a monochromatic "Pageviews by Countries" map. This oddity is causing some concern, in various forum discussions . Where one would hope to see a familiar Stats multi-shaded Audience map, with various countries displayed in differing shades of green or black, some blog owners are seeing a monochromatic pale green display. The monochromatic display appears to be accompanied by the mysterious "Unknown Region" entry, in the countries list. I am examining the Stats "Audience" page, for this blog - in different time range...

One interesting feature of Blogger, now removed, was the Google+ Share counter. Similar to the FaceBook "Like" counter, many people used to enjoy watching the Share counter increase, for a given blog or post. I, personally, used to share my blog posts to Google+ - then watch happily, as the numbers climbed. The Share counter is no more a part of Blogger.

Ever since 2009, when Blogger introduced the Stats visitor activity counter , blog owners have been reporting inconsistencies between Stats and other visitor activity counters . Recently, Google+ changed their +1 counter. Now, we wait for Blogger Engineering to update their +1 per post display counters, which use the +1 counts from Google+. Blog owners continue to report various Stats inaccuracies - such as discrepancies between Stats pageview counts, and the various social sharing counters. They fail to observe the functional differences between the various activity counters - and similarly, between Stats counts and social sharing metrics, such as Google+ +1 counts.

Ad blockers are popular Chrome add-ons, which let us manage various websites abilities to serve ads in our browsers. Many ad blockers include a script blocker. Like NoScript in Firefox, ad blockers may interfere with various Blogger features - such as the "Don't track" script, in the dashboard.

We've been experiencing - and discussing - referer spam, since 2011 . We still see unaware blog owners, asking in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . When I checked my stats for my blog, and looked at traffic sources, I noticed a link from a different country - and it just seems weird that Russian readers would then go to a US site. When we explain that they're probably seeing another referer spam attack - and that clicking on the links is not always a good idea, we get a variety of responses. Some want to know if there is a purpose, to this noise.

Similar to the need to properly filter cookies in the browser, we have the need to properly filter scripts. Cookies and scripts are completely different elements - but proper filtering of each is essential, to making many Blogger features operate properly . If you have a problem with Blogger - either accessing / using the dashboard, or using / viewing a blog - one of the simplest things to check, complementing cookie filter settings , is the browser script filter settings.

Blogger recently redesigned the Stats "Don't track ..." option - and removed third party cookies from the picture. The "Don't track ..." wizard is now accessed from the blog URL. The wizard still produces cookies - but they are ordinary first party cookies , which are much less feared than third party cookies. But, every silver lining has a cloud.

One of the least understood Blogger features is the Stats visitor counters , and the various displays. We see the confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , periodically. The "weekly" Stats numbers don't add up, properly! or Why is "Popular Posts" so out of touch, with reality? Magic is fun to watch, when it's just for amusement. When your numbers seem to have magical quality - changing from day to day, or display to display - it becomes annoying.

The new Stats "Don't track" option is an improvement, to many blog owners. "Manage tracking your own pageviews", as before, starts from the Stats dashboard page. The wizard now runs from a sub directory of the blog managed by the dashboard - and uses a normal (first party) cookie. Now, blog owners no longer must enable third party cookies , to make Stats ignore their page views. This is an improvement - but it can still present a challenge, for some blog owners.

Blog owners have been trying to block tracking their own Stats pageviews, for a few years. This option has long been unusable, for blogs published to custom domains . Recently, Blogger Engineering updated the option - and the dashboard page with the link.

We see an occasional question about search indexing, and visitor activity, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I find out what search queries are used, to bring my new readers, to my blog? This owner is thinking about how to get more traffic - the right way. You can use the Stats - Traffic sources dashboard page, and examine the top 10 Search Keywords, used to find your blog. Depending upon how large and popular your blog is - and what browser your readers use - you may or may not find out as much as you would think, however.

Almost 2 years ago, motion picture actor Paul Walker and Roger Rojas decided to joyride, take a spin , in suburban Los Angeles California. What followed was $500,000 + destruction, at speed exceeding twice the posted 45 MPH. Driven in an industrial / office complex , the street legal race car - his buddy Roger at the wheel - left the road, and wrapped itself around a tree. It takes money to own, and to race, a super car - like a Porsche Carrera GT, that took Paul's life. It takes no money, however, to own a super web application - like a Blogger blog.

Not every blog, that gets readers - or pageview counts - is going to get comments. We see the disappointment, periodically, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I have received over 2,000 page views, but only close friends comment. Is there a setting or something that makes sense as to why I'm not receiving comments? And yes, there are various settings, which may restrict your readers abilities to comment - but that may not be the only possible problem.

The Stats "Don't track ..." option continues to draw complaints. Various blog owners have recently complained, anew, that the previously reported low level problem is now affecting their blogs. The two problems, though having a common primary symptom, appear to have different victim populations. The previous problem seemed to primarily affect custom domain published blogs, this problem may be BlogSpot only. This problem, according to a majority of the blog owners reporting, appears to have started during the last two to three weeks. It may be wise, therefore, to treat this as a new problem.

This month, we have numerous reports of problems with the Popular Posts gadget, and its size being out of control. Some blog owners cannot get their gadgets to display as many as entries are selected - while others have more entries displayed, then are selected. And some report differing success with displaying "Last 7 days", or "Last 30 days", as opposed to "All time". One forum helper has suggested a CSS tweak, which may help in some cases - but not consistently.

Just as with a single owner blog, one would not want to count owner activity in Stats - with a team blog, one may not want to count team activity. Authors, like Administrators, need to use the option "Don't track my pageviews", to avoid Stats recording their activity as a visitor. Unfortunately, the "Don't track ..." setting wizard is part of the Stats dashboard page - and is accessible only to blog administrators.

Some blog owners report various discrepancies, and oddities, with Stats and its various components . A few owners find that the Popular Posts gadget, that supposedly will display any selected number (1 - 10) of the most popular posts for a blog during a given time period, is sometimes short the number selected. With only 6 posts displayed out of 8 posts selected, it is possible that the desired 8 posts may be displayed - if 10 posts are selected, and the display is refreshed. On the other hand, with only 9 posts displayed out of 10 posts selected, it's not possible to increase the selection to 11, to compensate for the "missing" post.

We see signs of confusion, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue , about Stats count adjustments. The number of page views for individual posts and total page views have dropped precipitously. It appears that Google is under reporting these page views, which of course results in less earnings for our website. This blog owner does not understand the effect of referer spam upon Stats - nor the separation of AdSense and Stats. Some blog owners think that they know what pageview counts are appropriate, for their blog - and are unhappy when Stats does not display counts that agree with their expectations.

I've discussed referer spam before, and its visibility in Stats logs produced by newer, less popular blogs . There is always the odd mature and popular blog, also showing referer spam in its Stats logs. Mature and popular blogs, published by experienced blog owners, may still be subject to referer spam. Referer spam attacks blogs of all age and popularity levels. Experienced blog owners will learn to recognise referer spam - and typically, when they identify it, they learn to ignore it.

Real people live in various countries all over the world. Every country has Internet service - and people who surf the Internet. Some read this blog - and maybe your blog, too, My blog pageviews today increased from 150 to 1530 !! And almost all the visits were from Canada. Please Help Me! Why would you dread Canadian readers, eh? Knowing that your blog may host readers, in a worldwide community, would you fear traffic from unknown countries?