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Dear members,
I hope this topic isn´t active anywhere else.

Well, some weeks ago I was browsing through my pictures on many different aviation websites and looked how many views my pictures had. After checking view stats at AP.net (317 views per photo), Planespotters.net (229 views per photo), Anet.net (807 views per photo, but mainly through three shared pictures on Facebook) and JP.com (1527 views per photo, mainly through Flightradar24), I´ve noticed that my views per photo here are really high in comparison. With 700 views per photo and lots of "1000+ views" pictures I´ve asked myself: Are there really this many viewers here?

I really like this page, but I´ve met many people who didn´t heard of it and in comparison to the "big websites" it appeared to me that this page is rather unkown and "small". Furthermore there is no screening here, which I love, but this also might "drive away" the "hardcore pros" with very high standards.

So yeah, I hope you know what I mean and it would be really nice, if someone could explain or enlighten me with new stats/facts I don´t know yet.

Thanks very much in advance and cheers!

AvB is pretty popular, but I have no clue if that factors in. Of course FB and Twitter, too.

View counts here are real.

When we did the SEO optimization, we tried to make sure that older shots don't just disappear in the depths of the database. The more popular they are, the more frequently we will try to bring them up again.

AvB is one of the tools for that, the way our homepage selection is working is another one. And we have a fantastic social media team, that also brings in a lot of views by carefully selecting the shots we promote around the web.

We are indeed a small site, and as a result, top photos here will not pick up as many views in the first 48 hours as they do on other websites.

But on the long run, the average shot here will easily pick up as many views as on bigger websites.

Thanks for explaining it

And here was me expecting this to be a complaint about lack of views

Views are definitely genuine. If they could be manipulated (other than by promotion and sharing) you would see a lot more of my mediocre uploads Your views are slightly above average for a frequent uploader (I would say 500-600 views per photo is the average of the more active photographers) which is likely down to your having a lot of quality shots that are easy to promote and that you are watched by a few other members.

ZuluRR wrote:I really like this page, but I´ve met many people who didn´t heard of it and in comparison to the "big websites" it appeared to me that this page is rather unkown and "small".

One thing I have learned from years of social media work on the site is that our size or how many people have heard from us is largely irrelevant. If the content we share is put in front of people interested in that content they will view it, which is why we take a much more focused approach to promoting our content. We also have an ever-increasing number of photographers promoting their own shots, often with great success.

ZuluRR wrote:Furthermore there is no screening here, which I love, but this also might "drive away" the "hardcore pros" with very high standards.

In some cases that may be true but we often see the complete opposite. Because of the unique way we do things, shots that may not pass screening elsewhere but that are topical and relevant often do very well. We also see many shots where this allows us to be the first site promoting content of a new livery or particular aircraft - we had one instance recently where a shot was uploaded at a launch event and we managed to work with the photographer to get their shot promoted within 5 minutes of the launch of the aircraft. Our most viewed shot so far this year was shared on over 50 facebook pages before any other site had their images live on their DBs. We may lose a few purists but we seem to offset that with the speed we can share our content.

Rather than start a new thread, I figured I'd add my question to here--and could perhaps be related to views. I noticed some of the bots are listed, and I can recognize the ones like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. I am curious about the Majestic-12 one, as I've never heard of that site. Does that perhaps drive up views? I'm guessing the other bots are indexing photos for searches.

md88dawg wrote:I am curious about the Majestic-12 one, as I've never heard of that site.

The Majestic-12 project is a search engine based outside of normal server arrangements, somewhere between a cloud and a collaborative DSE. Their bot almost certainly followed either Ed or myself (or both of us) here. There are a couple of oddball Chinese search engines that pay us a visit too, usually coinciding with uploads coming on from that part of the world.

md88dawg wrote:Does that perhaps drive up views? I'm guessing the other bots are indexing photos for searches.

I doubt we see any actual traffic directly from bots, but we certainly benefit from a higher position in search engine returns because of them. You would be amazed at how many times I work on the DBQ and find our own images in the top 5 or 6 search engine returns, especially now that several other sites are hiding (or partially hiding) their data which inevitably drives them down the page(s).

As for bot views - if the bot identifies itself as such (and is known to our board software), then it will not generate views.

Not every bot will, but it's very difficult to filter out those that don't. Still, they will account only for a small portion of the overall views.

And I can only second what John said - the best way to get more views is by promoting your shots in social networks. John & our social media team are doing an absolutely brilliant job, which you can easily see in our overall view counts whenever they have to take a day off.

But there is only so much we can do. So please do share your photos yourself as well. Best by sharing the short link provided underneath every photo, or by using the embed code for other forums.

Easiest is to share those links straight on your Facebook and Twitter. But there are also a few very active spotting groups on Facebook, like International Aviation Photographers, where linked shots are almost guaranteed to pick up quite a few views.

You will benefit by getting more views, and the site will benefit by becoming a little less unknown among spotters

Zak wrote:As for bot views - if the bot identifies itself as such (and is known to our board software), then it will not generate views.

Not every bot will, but it's very difficult to filter out those that don't. Still, they will account only for a small portion of the overall views.

And I can only second what John said - the best way to get more views is by promoting your shots in social networks. John & our social media team are doing an absolutely brilliant job, which you can easily see in our overall view counts whenever they have to take a day off.

But there is only so much we can do. So please do share your photos yourself as well. Best by sharing the short link provided underneath every photo, or by using the embed code for other forums.

Easiest is to share those links straight on your Facebook and Twitter. But there are also a few very active spotting groups on Facebook, like International Aviation Photographers, where linked shots are almost guaranteed to pick up quite a few views.

You will benefit by getting more views, and the site will benefit by becoming a little less unknown among spotters

By the way, as we'll have some meets soon, can you bring us some "business cards" to hand to the local spotters we meet ?

Sure thing. I still got several dozen flying around. Will bring a pack, thanks for reminding me!
(And better remind me again on Wednesday next week )