New Insights Tracking is garbage, please restore the earlier version

[cryofboston]

This appeal also Twittered to @weebly:

https://twitter.com/cryofboston/status/1179822388927746049

I am a Weebly user. On Oct 1, I found out that INSIGHT tracking suddenly changed.  I looked around and realized this is a problem common to many users. Apparently, you have adopted a new tracking method that, in your words, matches better with Google Analytics.

My opinion is: You are giving up your tech edge, you are doing yourself damage, because the earlier version is an accurate measure of the visits while the new one appears to be garbage. 

Last months, 1) when I introduced a webpage on twitter, I always saw a spike in the visits to that specific page; 2) when I visited my webpage myself; I could immediately saw the increase in visits to that page, suggesting the earlier tracking was real time as well.

In the past two days, the tracking did not respond to my visits to my website, even from a different location. It did not show updates instantly; it seemed to update only once at the midnight.

I compiled my insight data recorded on Sept 24 and Oct 3 (Figure below). For the same date of Sept 23, old tracking shows 32 unique visits and 72 page views while the new tracking only shows 1 unique visit and 1 page view. The difference is stunning and scary.

https://twitter.com/cryofboston/status/1179823722091421696/photo/1

As a user, we want honest raw data, even they might be tainted with bots or spiders. We don’t want censored data. Please restore previous version. “Can’t go back” is not an excuse to a tech company. I contacted you by email but haven’t heard from you yet. My case number is: 43256398. 

[Bernadette3]

Thanks for the feedback. This is the information support has been providing:

"The new insights methodology was applied retroactively to past data so that would explain the discrepancy in the numbers being shown now and the numbers you saw previously. Here is some more details on the change: The "Old" Way: In the old version of Insights, we parse web server logs to get traffic data to calculate page views based on server traffic. While more resistant to traffic from bots, this methodology has technical limitations and can lend itself to over-counting. In addition, this methodology is more susceptible to counting search engine bot traffic. The "New" Way: The new Insights utilizes front-end tracking where a website visitor's browser pings Weebly servers to report usage. This is the same methodology used by Google Analytics, and is designed to handle granular calculations. While this methodology has certain limitations as tracking can be disabled by an ad blocker, it is much closer to numbers rendered by Google Analytics, and is much less susceptible to over-counting." 

I hope this helps to explain the change and why your data may look different now. Overall, this change should result in more accurate visitor data and is more in line with the industry standard.

[Magoo]

I agree with cryofboston, the new system & Google Analytics are complete rubbish. The fact that 'tracking can be disabled by an ad blocker' renders the data useless as most people employ ad blockers these days. In addition to this the 'Compare Your Data' graph fails to load almost every time.

Please reintroduce the old system asap, the new one is non functional and gives inaccurate & incomplete data. I quit using the useless Google Analytics a long time ago and preferred the more accurate Weebly data - now Weebly's data is as useless as Google Analytics.

[greekguy]

My question (from the other relevant thread) still stands....how can the "new" way be better without the "old" being wrong (which would mean you guys were giving your customers wrong tools to work with)?....the difference in the stats is super dramatic, it's huge....which makes it something beyond statistical error or some small difference between counting methods.....Again, if the old way was so dramatically wrong in counting stats that means that we based our businesses on WRONG NUMBERS!...who is responsible for that? My audience is quite local and small so its easier for me to check whether or not they do follow what I have to offer....and just like others have said, the real stats are nothing like the crap I see on my Insights for the past 2 days. Insights now look like an meta-apocalyptic event where only cockroaches now crawl the internet......The more I look at this whole thing the more i think there is either a very big mistake you made and dont want to admit it openly or some tech crap google pulled you into. Bring back the old way of counting stats and be done with google's standards. If we want google analytics we know where to get them.

[Beychief]

I agree that the new method is terrible and urge you to restore the old method or at the very least give us both sets of data.

Under the old method, when I spent advertising dollars on a site or added a new page.top a site, there would be a spike in the activity for that site or that page.  Under the new method, there is no indication of any change in activity.

Some for the advertising I do is on Facebook.  At the end of a promotion, FB gives you information on the number of clicks on the link that was contained in the advertisement.  Under the old method, I would see a corresponding increase in activity for my sites.  Yet, with your new method, there is no recognbition of this traffic coming to my sites.

It is no answer to say that the new method is closer to Google Analytics.  I have thought for some time that Google was undercounting traffic to my sites.  As with Weebly's new method, Google's method appears oblivious to advertising expenditures and to new additions to the sites.   Google is a great company but they are not perfect.      

[Magoo]

At another Weebly Community post Adam (Community Manager) states the following about the system that Weebly has just adopted:

'This is caused by the different ways in which we track vs what Google or AddThis does. We track by IP address rather than by cookies (which can notoriously undercount). This means that we'll track hits from people who are blocking cookies in addition to non-human visitors like search engine bots and spiders.

[Adam7]

There isn't anything necessarily bad with either approach - they're just different ways of going about it, each with the own pros and cons. It's kind of like this: say you want to know how many trucks drive down a road each day. You could lay cords on the road, but this would get every vehicle that drives and not just trucks. Switching to a camera method will let more easily limit it to just trucks, but there are circumstances where it might not take a picture or the picture is obscured.

[Magoo]

Yes, but you say it 'notoriously undercount[s]' - why use that system when you've already admitted how bad it is.

Here's an addition to your analogy - adblockers and cookies turned off are like a truck parked in front of the camera blocking it's accurate operation. The data is worthless and Weebly users could've gotten it already from Google Analytics if they chose to.

Please reinstate the old system, or Weebly might find their customers start writing reviews mentioning how flawed their website traffic data is. The 'Compare Your Data' graph is so bad it doesn't even load most of the time.

[greekguy]

The answer to Magoo's question (and to my own question posted 3 times already) is in this news...

https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/26/square-acquires-weebly/

https://hosting.review/news/weebly-acquired-square/

I dont know tech, my mind goes only so far when it comes to tech details and specs....but I do know business and I do know how to smell boooolsit....so the truck analogy (what a load of crap!), the not wanting to admit a huge fault (if indeed the new way is efficient where the old way was not), the staying quiet for days and evading direct questions instead of answering them....it' s all boooooolsit....it's the acquisition (what a payday!) that brought the need for change or some new rules or terms laid down. E-commerce is huge global business and it definitely needs adjustment when counting bullion...right guys? Thats why the weebly people -of the most direct and nice web providers I have met online- started backflipping on their ways and MO. Here's a piece of advice from a business dude....tell the truth to your customers. Always. Its business...nobody will take it personally. When you lie and hide and backflip THATS when people start thinking less of you. Enjoy your new success guys, you deserve it (honestly). But if you DID built a better way for counting stats and you decided to sacrifice it for conforming to other standards, you're going to regret it. I hope someone else figures out the MO you left out and sells it to us. 

[GSR1]

Regardless of whether the new system is better or worse than the old system in analyzing traffic, the MAIN problem I am having, and it seems like many others are having, is that "COMPARE YOUR DATA" is not loading most of the time. Usually it will load by about 4pm in the afternoon, and I have to wait all day long before I can see the results. So, as this issue has been raised on this thread many times, why isn't someone like Adam of Weebly addressing this particular problem???

[Adam7]

Are you saying that if you view your stats at say, 10AM, and leave it open, it then takes until 4PM before that part of the stats loads? Or are you saying that it just doesn't show updated stats until around 4PM your time?

[GSR1]

Hi Adam,

It's morning now (my time in New Zealand). And once again, I go into Weebly Insights and the "Complare Your Data" section displays a circle going round and round, as thought it is trying to load, but it never does, and therefore does not display any data. Depending on the day, this information will then appear in the afternoon (usually around 4pm, but sometimes earlier). 

The other critical issue I can see, which has been raised by others on this thread, is that the website data does NOT display in real time, like it used to in the old version. It only updates "once" a day, late in the evening my time. That means I have to wait all day long before I can see how many new visitors have visited my website, even if "Compare Your Data" does finally display.

Of course this must be taken as a serious issue by Weebly, because it must be turning many of your many valued and paying customers off (???) ... and considering jumping ship.

[Adam7]

Are you still seeing that, @GSR? I didn't get perma-loading when I checked your insights. I'm not sure if that was a temporary issue or something with the time frame in which you checked them.

[Paul7456]

I also have to add my vote for a move back to the prevous version of Insights Tracking as like many have stated on here I would always see a spike in activity when I'd posted links to my pages on social media.  Now I don't expect that much traffic on my site, but since the introduction of the new analytical measures I apparently get so little traffic I might as well close the site.  Of course the new analytics are nonsense as I get Contact Forms and comments on social media about some of my pages that far exceed the number of visits/page views shown now.

[Bernadette3]

Thanks for the feedback. I don't think there's any plans to change the insights back to the old way, but I definitely understand and appreciate what you are saying. I'll forward the info along to the teams. 

Do you still see social media as a referrer site? 

[sbtopics]

I found the statement below from a post by Brodie of weebly on 4/4/16.  If this still accurate?

"Hello there!

A unique visitor is someone who has not visited your site in the past 7 days. So if I visited your site and visited four pages, I'd count as one Unique View and four Page Views. "