Bots And Real People

I believe if you promote to social media people who view those shares can and do appear as a bot, so not all are puters but people pulling up the image from within Twitter or Facebook and the IP shows as if it is from Beverly hills or some other server location. No search engine is going to hit one image seven days in a row if no changes were made to the page.

when i see a view i assume it's a buyer. and leave it as simple as that.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Bots use the same servers and networks as real people.

"No search engine is going to hit one image seven days in a row if no changes were made to the page."

Ever been "visited" by Guanzho (sp?), China? It was hitting an image of mine last year with 100-200 hits a day for well over a week. I did no changes to the image to "incite" the visit.

Guanzho has also been hitting one of my images fairly regularly for the past few weeks, too. Now New York has joined in.

Most of my visitors are New York, Beverly Hills and Alexandria, IN. My Guanzho visitor has moved on....

Bonfire Photography says, "I believe if you promote to social media people who view those shares can and do appear as a bot, so not all are puters but people pulling up the image from within Twitter or Facebook and the IP shows as if it is from Beverly hills or some other server location."

This is new to me and interesting and makes a lot of sense, mostly in terms of Twitter. I promote to FB occasionally, but do not tweet, and when I post to FB I get a smattering of hits over the next few hours and even days, but they all show as different locations - none of this NY-NY-NY-NY-NY bit.

However, one of my followers in particular has tweeted a number of my images and I always get a ton of hits from NY usually, but also, as you say, Beverly hills, immediately after that. I just figured all this activity was impersonal - i.e. random and computer generated. It's interesting to me to know that there is more likely a person at least receiving and maybe viewing a tweet involved.

Mike Savad, is this the reason you say, "when i see a view i assume it's a buyer. and leave it as simple as that"? Not really a buyer but a potential buyer?

some bots have wallets. :)

I'm lost in these discussions. What do you guys use the viewer/hits data for? Are you just looking for location trends or is there something more... does it change how you promote work? I never look at my visitor count or where they come from. Am I missing some valuable info? I hate missing valuable info.

Good question, Cynthia. I don't look that often, but when I do, it's usually just idle curiosity.

I like to scan down the thumbs for images I haven't done anything with recently - like I haven't entered them in a contest or submitted them for a group feature. When I spot one, I glance at the location. Sometimes it's interesting.

Or when I make a sale, I check the history. Especially in the case of a bigger sale, I usually see that the image has been viewed two or three times over a period of a day or two. Do I do anything with that info? No . . . I just look.

The other thing I look for occasionally is buyer location coordinating with photo location - especially on my local images. I like to think some of those views result directly from keyword searches here.

But no, for me it does not change what I do :)

Bots are not all bad or useless...I find often after an asset page has been interacted with (commented on, entered in a contest, posted out somewhere offsite, etc., etc.), bots will come and visit.

If I notice this scenario, I'll often type a generic phrase (e.g. Devils Tower Prints) related to those recently visited images into Google Images, and more often than not, one or more (typically a group) of my FAA images are in the first 50 or so of the Google results.

Just an anecdotal example of how bots may be indicative of other entities taking notice.

...now if only the Google link from the image would go back to my image and not a general FAA search results page for my original search phrase (e.g. Devils Tower Prints)...

Check that previous statement - I just checked a couple of Devils Tower Prints near the top of Google Image search and they linked directly to the image's asset page - fantastic! Guess it depends from what page the search engine pulls the image...

Theoretically, a person searching for "blah blah" prints can type that phrase into Google, be presented with many relevant FAA options (among others granted), and be led straight to a buy page! ...great!

I'm with Cynthia! What IS the point of spending your time looking at visitors? I never understood this!?

Like Nikolyn, it's mostly just idle curiosity for me. I do like it when folks look from either where I live now or my hometown. I have a few shots from Richmond, Va. that gets views from there and one time was bought from there. So I look for locations where shots were taken. The last time I sold there was no views recently on that image, so I guess someone had previously put it in their cart.

I find the visitor count to be useless because of the listed bots....they hide the human visitors. Yes, we have been told that there are real customers from some of these places but the vast majority of them are not.....I'd love to know what value, if any, there is to have them numbers, unless it is a psychological ruse to make us feel like people are really looking to buy.....