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May 4, 2005
I Smell A Rat - 65 Hits in an Hour? - What's Going on With Opera Blogs' Stats?
Below are screenshots of a sudden leap in OperaWatch's stats over the last hour or so - thanks to Opera's lovely caching. I don't have exact times, but my increase in hits were at least partly to do with seperate feeds mistakenly sent being joined together by an Opera staff member - and as you can see, LSR's clicks are exactly the same in both shots - so not that much time could have passed. Similarly, I'm currently on the top of the most visited charts. I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but this seems a bit irregular, and these sudden jumps have happened in the past. OperaWatch hasn't had anything on the "latest" front page throughout this period, so I'm at a loss to explain it. The only thing I can think of that wouldn't invalidate the results is that the same Opera employee joined up his stats as well, though I've not seen his blog being doubled up in the lists. The earlier screenshot is a bit blurrier because it's capped off win2k, with no anti-aliasing.
Could this have anything to do with me saying the deadline for the contest has been extended and that I'm going to kick his ass?
Edit: As my helpful (if anonymous) friend below has indicated, link pimping is probably the cause of the jump. I've said before that I would never do anything of the sort, nor have I. Basically what our friend did was link to his own blog with the url link on Opera Blogs, on a post in the forums. I have saved a copy of the page as proof. I'm not saying this is necessarily unethical, but without a framework to work in, some kind of terms and conditions, this kind of act is a kind of grey area that bogglers might not be clear about. Certainly if it's fair game, people will spend as much time pimping their links as writing about Opera.
You're going to have to take my word for it that I was hovering over the first link you see when the screenshot was taken - the mouse doesn't show up, and neither do tooltips.
Posted by subtitles at May 4, 2005 1:15 PM | Opera Boggling
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Comments
This may be your answer. Take a look at the comment by danigoldman, in particular at the link he uses.
Posted by: anonm at May 4, 2005 2:26 PM