View counts down?

[Statius]

I think you are correct that "similar stories" lists at the end of stories are more important than many people realize. But I can't see how it's negatively affected my stories. In general, my stories are appearing MORE on these lists over time rather than less, as far as I can tell.

Im just not sure if those recommendations change periodically. That's my question

 

[Writer61]

On stories directly.

Then I have escaped their attention … so far!!!!

 

[SimonDoom]

Im just not sure if those recommendations change periodically. That's my question

I don't think so. I think they are based on a formula that remains the same -- shared favorites.

 

[RejectReality]

I haven't looked at the stats on anything with any regularity in so long that I wouldn't have a clue if there was a blip in mine.

If you're close to the 1 year point of a drought, then almost everything that was on the 1 year toplists is falling off. That could certainly account for a drop in views of the back catalog.

Maybe they updated the bot and spider filter again. If everything else is cruising along at relatively normal levels, but views are down, that's a possibility.

I haven't seen any fluctuation in my favorites or follows, which is the only thing I've looked at regularly in a while. All seems normal there for a point where I haven't released anything but a short EC story in forever.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

I, too, have noticed that views are way down, even receiving votes without any views registered.

 

[redgarters]

I suppose that's at least better than my "I thought this was pretty average, which is perfectly fine" review.

Honestly I would have been happy with that too coming from them. Getting good marks for the story being hot mainly tells me that it fit well with the reviewer's preferences/kinks and managed to present that in a way that made them horny. I'll admit that was the main goal with that story, but with my later ones not so much.

 

[alohadave]

I suppose that's at least better than my "I thought this was pretty average, which is perfectly fine" review.

Damning with faint praise.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I have assiduously tracked my story numbers since April 2017. One of the stats I follow is daily views of all my stories. I download the story stats at around the same time in the morning, usually at least once a week and sometimes more often, and calculate the daily averages. I haven't published a story in nearly a year, so for the last six months or so my daily views have been very stable and have not reflected the influence of newly published stories on views.

In the last month, I've noticed the daily average views have dropped significantly, around 25-30%. This morning, the 24-hour views were less than 50% of what they normally are.

Has anyone else noticed something like this?

From an average of 26.14 views per day to 26.68 in the last week, so I'm not seeing any drop.

 

[RejectReality]

I've got one reference, now that I think about it. I posted on Wednesday that Mom's Stocking Stuffer was at 583,878. Today it's at 583,947. So 69 views on a 14 year old story with a 4.65 in 4 days. The last posting to that pen name was July of 2024, and the one prior to that was June of 2020. So not exactly active. One story in Anal on page 3 of the all-time topist for that name, so not pulling in much from there.

With such low visibility and activity, that seems pretty reasonable for a M/S incest story in 4 days. One tiny dot on the chart, but there it is.

EDIT: That toplist reference wasn't even that name. LOL I forget which stories belong to which pen name sometimes. So zero toplist entries as Les.

 

[Bamagan]

As a probably unrelated data point, I noticed that the 'random story' spinner on the category hubs is not working properly right now. It often does nothing, or will shuffle in new random stuff only once per session. I would be surprised if it was a major factor, but I do sometimes use it to find something to read when I'm not really sure what I'm in the mood for.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

I have noticed that my counts are down. My most read story "Breeding Bull" has always gotten at least 50 to 100 views per day, but now it's only getting about 20 or 30. I've noticed the views seem to stall overnight and sometimes during the day lately, too. And once they restart, the counts don't seem to catch up. Something is definitely off.

I just checked, and it looks like the views have stalled again. My Halloween story that came out a month ago is scoring okay, and the comments are good,, but it's barely had any views. Which has me thinking that the site isn't keeping up with the readers.

 

[NotWise]

Back to the original question for a moment . . .

I haven't seen a drop in views. I have the view count automatically recorded each time there's a change in votes or score. My most recent stories would be the most likely to show a change in the last month, and they don't.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

Mine have stalled for the last couple of hours, and I've noticed there are no views anymore overnight. Something is definitely happening with my views.

 

[Voyeurkenneth]

Mine have stalled for the last couple of hours, and I've noticed there are no views anymore overnight. Something is definitely happening with my views.

I was going to say the same thing. They aren’t updating as frequently. To what degree, I’m not sure.

 

[alohadave]

I've seen similar. I download stats on Fridays and saw a drop in views of 30-50% on many, but not all stories about two weeks ago. I haven't processed this Friday's stats yet to see if it was a blip or a trend.

After processing this week's stats, it looks like a blip. Some stories are up this week, some down. It'll take a few more weeks of data to see if there was anything there.

 

[designatedvictim]

I have assiduously tracked my story numbers since April 2017. One of the stats I follow is daily views of all my stories. I download the story stats at around the same time in the morning, usually at least once a week and sometimes more often, and calculate the daily averages. I haven't published a story in nearly a year, so for the last six months or so my daily views have been very stable and have not reflected the influence of newly published stories on views.

In the last month, I've noticed the daily average views have dropped significantly, around 25-30%. This morning, the 24-hour views were less than 50% of what they normally are.

Has anyone else noticed something like this?

Odd that you mention this.

For the last few days, I've been debating on asking the same thing.

My most-read/voted-on/liked work has been off any sort of list for months, now. Rating is fine, but too low for any top lists. Been getting a steady trickle of views and votes, though.

Early on in its new life as a find-only-because-it-matched-search-terms story, it settled into something with a little over 150-views/day with a slow trend downward.

In the last month, I've seen only three 100+ views a day with it bottoming out at 15 on 11/13.

With an actual vote placed about two hours ago, I just finished and eight-day vote drought.

I'm wondering if the search tool has been updated.

 

[NotWise]

Odd that you mention this.

For the last few days, I've been debating on asking the same thing.

My most-read/voted-on/liked work has been off any sort of list for months, now. Rating is fine, but too low for any top lists. Been getting a steady trickle of views and votes, though.

Early on in its new life as a find-only-because-it-matched-search-terms story, it settled into something with a little over 150-views/day with a slow trend downward.

In the last month, I've seen only three 100+ views a day with it bottoming out at 15 on 11/13.

With an actual vote placed about two hours ago, I just finished and eight-day vote drought.

I'm wondering if the search tool has been updated.

The normal trend is for views to drop off as the story loses visibility on the various lists, then stay low and near constant or very gradually decline over time. Publishing new stories will give it a bump.

 

[iwatchus]

I don't think so. I think they are based on a formula that remains the same -- shared favorites.

Just out of curiosity. Is this a guess or has the site ever explained this at all? It would be a reasonable recommender approach to use, but probably not what I would have chosen.

 

[designatedvictim]

The normal trend is for views to drop off as the story loses visibility on the various lists, then stay low and near constant or very gradually decline over time. Publishing new stories will give it a bump.

Yeah, that's why I specifically mentioned the whole 'no-longer on any lists' with a very slow tailing off.

While I haven't reviewed my stats in-depth on this, I have noticed what feels like a significant uptick in zero-view stats periods, of late.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

Yeah, that's why I specifically mentioned the whole 'no-longer on any lists' with a very slow tailing off.

While I haven't reviewed my stats in-depth on this, I have noticed what feels like a significant uptick in zero-view stats periods, of late.

Same here. It has been quite a few hours since any of my stories have had any views, so the view counts have obviously stalled.

 

[alohadave]

has the site ever explained this at all?

I think you know the answer to this.

 

[SimonDoom]

Just out of curiosity. Is this a guess or has the site ever explained this at all? It would be a reasonable recommender approach to use, but probably not what I would have chosen.

I don't recall that the site has explained it this way, but it's not difficult to figure out.

 

[iwatchus]

I had never really looked at the recommendations. I think I only clocked on a handful of them when I was only reading here.

Out of curiosity, I just checked the recommendations on a few winter event stories I have opened, hoping to read. I have no idea what they are doing.

Most of the recommended stories have a lot of favorites (and views). But not all. At first I thought they were doing some tag matching (it worked for the first two I checked), but nope. And they weren't even giving particularly compatible categories. I saw two LW recommendations on a Romance story, which feels wrong.

But every story was a 4.7 or above rating.

You don't want to just recommend highly read stories -- too likely to recommend stories the reader has already read. And they want to build up interest in lesser read writers to give readers a larger existing catalog. There is no way way to tell who has favorited stories, but it could just be stories favorited by people who have favorited the story you are reading. But that doesn't give you recommendations for new stories, without any favorites. My curiosity is piqued now. I may do some more experimenting and try to learn what I can.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

It looks like everything has stalled. I've had no views, favorites or comments since this early this afternoon.

It would be nice to know what's going on before I submit another story.

 

[ColtonWrites]

I thought the FAQs specified that they only update view counts every 12-24 hours?