104 Comments on “30 Million Views”

1. I think it should be obvious that the Mallet is out for the sort of person for whom Malleting will be required, starting the sort of person who doesn’t grasp the concept of “up to.”

2. “Up to” is a terrifying thing. My lawyer once beheld a can purporting to be “clam chowder”, with the helpful legend: “Now with up to 2% real clams.”

3. Try this: “My blog gets up to……10 BILLION hits a day!”

   That’ll show ’em.

4. You never forget your first 30 million . . .

5. People love throwing stones in an attempt to seem smarter or more influential then they really are. “If I can catch you in a mistake, then I am so clever regardless of the fact that I don’t positively contribute to society on my own merit.” Easier to destroy/disparage then to build/create.

   In my mind this begs the question: if an individual like that is so upset over stats reporting and the relative influence of a particular website, then why the f do they spend the mental capital to care to begin with. Go take their negativity and de-contribute elsewhere.

   I would say more, but long typing on an iPhone is annoying. So I will choose not to. (Holy crap- I had a choice not to get irritated; genius! Someone tell these other clowns about free will.)

6. Congrats, I would imagine you would do opposite of hide your numbers since I suspect this site is a significant part of your marketing campaigns as indicated in ARC’s of the past. I would like you have received a post award bump this last week?

7. “But you’ve said 50K and now you’re saying 45K so all the rest of the numbers don’t matter!! Clearly we’re getting to you and exposing your lies!!!!” – The gist of the posts and comments I think we can expect from some of your more loving stalker types very soon…

8. Mazal tov! on the milestone that more or less just passed. I’m a relative newcomer to your blog and your books, and happy to see that you are getting enough appreciation to keep you in this line of work for a long time.

9. That’s a LOT of views, congratulation!

   I’d be inclined to say “frequently gets 50k views a day, peak I’ve noticed is 125k” or some such (exact numbers adjusted to be, um, right).

   I do frequently joke that “Up to 40% off!” in an advertisement makes only one commitment: nothing will be MORE than 40% off. I take “up to…” claims to be a statement of the absolute maximum, not the typical.

10. Congrats. You seem to be having a good month. :)

11. “Up to”. It’s a simple concept.

12. I’ve got 188,289…… so just two orders of magnitude and a doubling and I’ll be caught up. q;o)

    Congrats on the milestone! People often tell us they’re meaningless, but those are usually either a) jealous they can’t get there or b) so far beyond your level that they cant’ comprehend why you’d celebrate such a small number

13. Oh yeah, and I forgot to say, I get up to 200 per day, although my best was 1686 when I wrote about one of the most controversial topics on the web – the Linux distro review!

14. Since I’ve visited here 4(?) times today, as different posts appear in my Google Mail and I show up to read them, I am at least 4 visitors (maybe more, if the comments pages count as separate visits too). So the only truthful way to put it is “up to”…

15. Alex Hazlett:

    Actually, if you’re at the same computer each time, you’re recorded as a single visitor, since the site tracks IPs (I think). So one visitor, four visits.

16. 30 million views in 5 years is still around 20 thousand views a day on average.

    So claiming “up to 50 thousand” looks conservative to me!

    (I note that my mental approximation is, well, approximate.
    Someone may provide a figure with decimal places later.
    But, for an average for a spiky website, it’s the magnitude that counts…)

17. I have it on good “authority” that all your stats are made up =P Of course it was from some guy who brought you up twice in a 3500 word screed, that had nothing to do with you, just to insult you he also implied AGW was a conspiracy so there is that…

18. @notsont: Actually, it is well established that 72.83% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

19. Congrats!

    You know, even if you were lying about your site’s reach, it doesn’t actually follow that you are, therefore, “wrong about [white males, harassment, gay marriage, bacon, what-have-you]”, which is what they are DESPERATELY WANTING it to mean.

20. Of course, my apologies for not beginning my mini rant with:

    Congrats on the accomplishment! I continue to enjoy time following your work and am glad that others feel the same way. As a late comer to this blog and new to being a blog follower in general (yes, I know I am a bit behind the times) I have really enjoyed the daily distractions and commentary. Keep it up and thank you!

21. Congratulations! Scalzi ftagn!

22. He’s such a prick.

23. mral, et al:

    Let’s make sure our comments have some value beyond expletive, please.

24. @ Mr. Scalzi: Is MRAL a troll? I’ve seen him be a jerk, and his name is either a sexist blight or a very well-concealed parody, but he’s also occasionally been reasonable and rational. I’m confused.

25. dude! You can stuff the google analytics and wordpress ballot boxes too? Does your power know no end? :)

26. I have a hard time seeing the fundamental point of calling you out regarding your site’s stats. Are you selling advertising based on those stats? If so, my blocker is awesome!

    Again, what’s the point? 45,000 or 4,500, what benefit are you supposed to get for puffing your numbers? Where’s in it for you? I don’t see it.

    Much ado about nothing, as seems to be the wont for certain folks.

27. John, congratulations on the milestone. This must be especially gratifying coming just the day before its 15th anniversary.

    I’m loving The Mallet, btw (and, as you know, so is my daughter). My only complaint is that so far I’ve already read most of the posts here on the site. But I think that says something about me–and unlike people who don’t understand “up to”, I DO recognize that it’s not your fault that I’ve already read these posts.

28. Tracking unique visitors is tough since there are several common ways to do it (and more ways to do it that are not common). Alex, John is right that if you visit from the same computer and browser & gateway IP address in one day that your 4 visits will show up as one unique visitor that day. However, if you use a different browser each time (FF, Chrome, IE, then Opera for instance) it might record that as 4 unique visitors; that depends on the web stat program and the parameters the designers programmed into it. Then too, what happens if you change IP addresses but not the computer — as often happens when you use a smartphone, tablet or laptop that uses WiFi access at different locations? I suspect that some stat trackers count that as unique while others may not. Some stat trackers use cookies to track but that has become less common as folks often turn off cookie support to help defeat online advertising.

    One other item to consider regarding how complex this is: my daughter and I both read Whatever and we use the same computer, browser and IP gateway to do so. While we are most certainly two unique visitors only one unique visitor will be counted each day from my home. In magazine publishing most magazines estimate a pass-along read rate of 5-6 times (or more). A subscriber & newsstand circulation of 100,000 magazines becomes an ad rate basis of 500,000. In the example of myself and daughter, John gets no pass-along credit for multi-user households or public access computers (libraries, schools, internet cafes, etc.). He could easily justify a pass-along of rate of 1.3 unique visitors if he wanted to (some popular web sits do this, BTW, and use higher pass-along rates) and no professional web marketing wonk would fault him.

    All in all I suspect John’s numbers are very conservative.

29. I typed “(30000000 visits) / (days since october 1 2008)” into Wolfram Alpha and got 2.223 x 10^-6 visits/s^2 back, so … there’s that for you.

    Congratulations on reaching such a shiny round number!

30. Congratulations!

31. @MVS: thanks for the insight. I enjoyed marketing in college but took another path afterwards. I knew nothing about how these statistics were obtained and find it very interesting. Appreciate the explanations.

32. Floored, that was just a stupid comment on my part. I was trying to be clever and ended up on the failure mode. Sorry.

33. Congratulations. I get about 20 visitors a day mostly, at which rate, I would be 112 years old before I reach your total. Well done.

34. I’m three visitors per day, sometimes four. Home, work, phone, library. I don’t check any other blog nearly as often, so that says something. And, honestly, usually I’m checking for the comments, which I never, ever do at any other site.

35. Congratulations, Scalzi. I think that more than a grain of salt — most likely a cattle salt block of salt — is needed in all discussion of such numbers, and your explanations of the meanings and possible errors and distortions were helpful to people who I’ve sent to those links to learn of the fallibility of such numbers. Thank you.

36. Congrats again.

    I just yelled “Taco night!”. Good for a celebration in your honor… I make the best home made tacos.

    I have your blog sent to my email and RSS feed it too(don’t ask). But I like to read the comments on the page. So I usually end up here. But if I don’t, I am assuming you don’t get my count…Or do you?

37. You’re a fibber, Scalzi! “Up to” clearly implies a hard upper limit, yet the stats you provided show that your hits have occasionally exceeded that limit. You’re understating your hits, probably for some nefarious porpoise that us land mammals can’t quite fathom. :)

    (You could always use the wonderful, “up to X or more” phrasing that occasionally appears in advertising, and is such an excellent example of words that sound precise, but actually convey no information whatsover.)

    Honestly, I’m not sure what the idiots who dispute your figures are hoping to prove. Not only are they clearly wrong, but it would be irrelevant even if they were correct. For an author of books, the meaningful and telling statistic is book sales, not website hits. The latter is merely gravy.

38. @John Costello, it looks like wolfram misinterpreted the query to read as an increase of 30,000,000 hits per day since 2008. Drop the “days” in the denominator and it gets it right, with the illuminating result that the average view frequency over that time has been 0.19Hz.

    Fun fact: if you speed up the Whatever hit counter by a factor of a thousand and put it underwater, the noise it makes is identical to the song of the humpback whale. It’s true–Science!

39. Congratulations on 30 million hits! That’s an impressive stat, no matter how you count it.

40. 0.19 Hz. That means Whatever’s stat counter can be detected a long, long way away, right?

41. I think we should all shame Scalzi for not using long exacting language on Twitter.

    However, volume trolls can be avoided through a liberal use of the tilda. (and yes, Liberal Use of Tilda is my band)

42. John, do you track the countries from which the visitors are from? If so, how many are there? And is there a ranking? (I mean besides the US, which is probably number one.)

43. Christoph M.:

    WordPress’ stats program tracks that for me. Currently, the top countries for the day are, in order:

    United States
    Canada
    United Kingdom
    Australia
    Germany
    Sweden
    New Zealand
    France
    Netherlands
    Finland
    India
    South Africa
    Korea, Republic of

    These countries are usually at or near the top, although from day to day they move around a bit.

44. I read Whatever through my RSS feed but rarely click through to the actual site. Does WordPress count me as a reader? (Like Nielson now counts DVR’d programs?)

45. When exactly did the current claque of obsessive, fixated douchetrolls form? It couldn’t have just been from the Hugo win. Are they slithering over from Vox’s sewers, or what?

46. Susan H:

    No, RSS feed readers don’t get counted on the day-to-day visits. I can see them elsewhere, though.

    Thomas M. Wagner:

    Oh, who knows. The tend to be all of the same sort, however. Scratch a Scalzi hater, you’ll find a vaguely libertarian, status-obsessed dude terrified that women might not actually want or need him.

47. Neither RSS nor John’s Tweets count in his web stats. If you put together his total multi-channel reach it’s really quite impressive. Add the “stickiness”, aka the loyalty of his readership and you get a feeling for the massive advertising potential Whatever has. Not that I’m advocating it but just pointing out that if he wanted to go commercial he could make serious dinero. But no worries, Scorpius won’t let him go down that road I’m sure.

48. Mr. Sclazi, would you know if your site tracked mobile data? I visit on my phone more than computer.

49. I just fat fingered Scalzi…

50. David Christian:

    I think the site tracks mobile visits, yes.

51. First, congratulations on your recent milestone, whatever proves to be the most read blog in the SF community, and John Scalzi continues to be one of the most influential authors in the field.
    That said, why are we even debating the charges of a few loser dudebros that no one cares about?
    John, the mallet needs to come out and eliminate any such discussion that invites a lying loser to interpret with his numbers.

52. Mr. Scalzi, I believe the problem several of your critics have with the reporting of your site numbers was that you said you had 50k readers per day, before you began saying you have “up to” 50 k readers per day. If you look at your past quotes on the subject, you said 50k readers per day up until they mentioned this. After they mentioned it, you seemed to change how you reported your daily readers. Here is an example from your own twitter. https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/366326368717385730

53. riccola: You probably ought to check the date on the post Scalzi linked to to in the body of this post and then compare it to the date on the tweet you linked to. if you do, you might find that Scalzi said “up to” well before the creatures from the slime pit began harping on the volume of readers Whatever attracts.

54. John, I’m very sorry, but if you said something slightly inaccurate on Twitter once I’m going to have to stop buying your books.

55. Your right, I should have gone for the one from 2012. https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/275967789947318272
    I would said Mr. Scalzi’s critics take contention with the fact the Mr. Scalzi did not correct his inflated daily page readers and is instead arguing against a point they are not making. His critics do not disagree that Mr. Scalzi has at times reached over 50k readers in a day. However Mr. Scalzi seems to be of the opinion that they are arguing with “up to” even though they have never disagreed with this.

56. Yeah, no real scientist or professional engineer has ever implied “in the order of” when casually mentioning a number with 1-2 significant figures, whether in a tweet or in long form.

    Oh, wait, I meant to say that we do that all the time.

    We also have very little trouble understanding what John means.

57. TWICE? Slightly inaccurate on Twitter TWICE? I WANT MY MONEY BACK! I was only buying your books because I thought you had a high-traffic website and it turns out your traffic is only MODERATELY high!

58. I mean, hell, Twitter gives you all the room you need to make sure your point is as clear as possible, right?

59. So maybe it’s just me, but I have a slight feeling that Riccola actually believes that there’s been exactly 30036338 visitors to this blog, and not 30036337 or 30036339 or even 30036338.0.

60. Riccola:

    “I believe the problem several of your critics have with the reporting of your site numbers was that you said you had 50k readers per day, before you began saying you have ‘up to’ 50 k readers per day.”

    Then several of my critics are either ignorant or mendacious trolls, because I’ve had “up to” here for years, since at least the first post on the subject in 2010, where I talked about the problem of accurate stats reporting. If these folks are relying on the occasional comment on the character-limited medium of Twitter as examples of me dissembling when accurate, detailed information on the subject is easily accessible on my personal site at all times, volunteered by me, then we’re back into the “mendacious troll” category. Which is not at all surprising, given the one particular dipshit who is the most exercised about it.

61. Does the site usually see fewer visitors on a daily basis? Yup. Unless one is disingenuous or irretrievably stupid, one understands that’s what the phrase “up to” means.

    Point of order: one does not.

62. Jacob Schmidt:

    Oh, well. Sad for him.

63. Scalzi:
    “If these folks are relying on the occasional comment on the character-limited medium of Twitter as examples of me dissembling when accurate, detailed information on the subject is easily accessible on my personal site at all times, volunteered by me, then we’re back into the “mendacious troll” category.”

    To be fair, we’re talking about 140 characters which can be misleading, unless one is willing to actually visit this site and read the details. Which is outright fraudulent advertising compared to the dipshit in question…because you can usually tell he’s a racist, sexist, homophobic dipshit just a sentance or two. I mean, you can’t get any more open and honest than that. It’s rather helpful, really.

    Whereas you, you just demand reading comprehension and rational thought, don’t you? Oh, wait, that’s why i come here…nevermind, carry on!

64. Tracking visits is tricky at the best of times. If you’re within about 20% of reality you’re doing well.

    Re people who have to correct everything: http://xkcd.com/386/ says it all. :)

65. Reality is complex. Stupid people require simplicity. Therefore stupid people become detached from reality.

66. Speaking of stupid people, that’s really…oh, man. Wow. I can’t even. I didn’t realize that that Clark guy was such a…well, never mind.

67. Xopher, you will now likely be immortalized, as I was, in an update to his post. Congratulations(?)

68. *Up To* 30 million views

69. DudeBro:

    Ha! Well, as Google Analytics typically reports fewer hits than the WordPress stats program, your observation is not necessarily inaccurate. I will note at this point I tend to use the WordPress stats package as my default stats program, because it’s right there in my blog’s backend.

70. Wow, one of them has grasped the idea. Maybe he can get it through the heads of the others.

    PopeHat Ken does a nice line in fact-based snark, doesn’t he?

71. There is a problem with all this. Rush Slimeball once bragged that he has a rent free space in the Presidents head due to the fact that the President was complaining about him.
    Here is the upshot. Who cares what a racist, sexist, homophobic, right wing, loser dudebro and his 20 followers think about anything? This very conversation elevates him and those like him. You do realize that for them, this is a no lose proposition.
    Mark David Chapman didn’t even try to flee when he murdered John Lennon, he was glad to face the rest of his life in prison because now he was “somebody”. Likewise, for the dudebros, trying to drag John Scalzi into the mud is the highlight of their lives, this is as good as life gets for them.
    This very conversation is their victory.

72. Blackadder:

    “Who cares what a racist, sexist, homophobic, right wing, loser dudebro and his 20 followers think about anything?”

    Almost no one, and I spend less time thinking about the dude than people think (I’ve outsourced it to other people, for the purposes of this). However, from time to time people who don’t know better believe (or at least seriously consider) the nonsense they assert regarding me. It’s useful to occasionally clarify actual facts.

    Or, to put it another way, when a small group of people keep trying to drag you into the mud, from time to time you have to put the hose to them.

73. Doc, I doubt it, at this point. But it would be an interesting choice on his part considering that the things I kept deleting (resulting in that stammery comment) were things that I figured Scalzi wouldn’t want said here.

    I was confused for a bit because I thought PopeHat was a pretty reasonable blog. All the authors but one apparently are.

74. Dear Mr. Scalzi:

    Congratulations on this milestone.

    Some have suggested that your approach to comment moderation is somehow objectionable. If it is, it has not deterred visitors.

    I myself take a different approach to moderation on my blog. As a possible result, there are currently visitors on my blog arguing, as near as I can figure, whether careful analysis of your site traffic claims would mandate employing a theory of creationism as a tool to sweep minorities out of America’s population centers in order to get girls to talk to us, or something. I only got the gist of it.

    It’s a funny old world.

    Very truly yours,

    Ken White

75. Best comment of the thread.

76. Anyone remember the old McDonald’s signs that used to keep track of how many burgers they sold? First they went for millions, then it climbed into the billions, and now they simply say “Billions and billions served.” I believe this is a milestone of like proportions. The RSHD people simply can’t handle that some people like hamburgers. Congratulations, Mr. Scalzi.

77. Thanks for that insightful (or is it inciteful?) summary, Ken, so that I need not attempt to wade through the comments of recent postings at your site looking for wisdom :(

78. I myself take a different approach to moderation on my blog. As a possible result, there are currently visitors on my blog arguing, as near as I can figure, whether careful analysis of your site traffic claims would mandate employing a theory of creationism as a tool to sweep minorities out of America’s population centers in order to get girls to talk to us, or something. I only got the gist of it.

    This is only partly because you allow the subpontic lifeforms (including one known here by the initials of a phrase that accurately describes him) to comment, and also because your moderation takes a very relaxed approach to topicality, on which score John has the strictest policy I’ve seen.

    I saw what you said about learning more from disagreeing with Clark than from people who agree with you. That makes sense. But…seriously, there are people over there whose opinions I cannot imagine are useful to you, unless you have a deep fear of having too high an opinion of the human race. What’s the upside of allowing them, from your point of view?

    [And the Preview now appears as pale green on a slightly-less-pale green background. This wasn’t the case last time I Previewed.]

79. Sorry for two posts in a row…Ken, the paragraph I blockquoted was also hilarious. Forgot to mention that!

    [The text ‘This is the place where you leave the things you think’ is in that same pale green. Did you change the color scheme of the site, or do I just need to hard-reload the page?]

80. Xopher:

    The theme fiddled with the colors for some unknown reason. I’ll take a look at it.

81. Inside the Scalzi household, without any fuss, the lights were going out.

82. Comments update: the USA will collapse by 2033 and, though it’s not my fault, I deserve it.

    It’s left ambiguous whether Mr. Scalzi can ward this off by achieving a reliable 50,000 visits per day rather than only up to 50,000 visits per day.

83. My entire screen went into areas of black here about the time @Xopher posted. So the theme went completely nutso on the layout. (I’m using Chrome)

    +1 for “subpontic lifeforms” and +infinity for Ken’s summary, esp. that paragraph.

84. Lurkertype, you really should check out the comment threads in Making Light. I did not invent ‘subpontic’; it came from there. Where, I might add, there was some debate as to whether ‘infrapontic’ might be the preferred term.

85. Ken White:

    That is probably the best possible summation of that particular popehat discussion thread. And you can tell Clark I said so, since he evidently thinks enough of my opinion to update his post just to let everyone know.

86. riccola: I believe that you will find life much easier to understand once you grasp that 2010 is before 2012. Once you have that realization, many things will seem much clearer.

87. @Xopher, I thought you were my friend. Now you’re telling me about other places to waste time on the intarwebs. Like I need that? (Had I been there, I would have voted “sub” as well)

88. It seems like you are spending more blog space on the haters lately. The funny thing is, I, and other people I know, wouldn’t know a thing about what these people are saying except that you keep talking about them.

    Anyway…
    Congrats on the 30 million. We love your blog, as well as your writing, and hope it continues for another 30 million hits (and beyond).

89. Lurkertype, obviously I concur. But the noun ‘infrapont’ has a certain charm.

90. Congrats, Scalzi, you’ve come a long way from an ink-stained newspaperman!!!

    And AFAICS, most of it is due to sheer work ethic. Every book, better and better. {high-five}

91. You have gotten 30 million visits, like i’ve gotten 30 million blowjobs

92. Dudebro, the ones from your kids don’t count.

93. DudeBro, LilTeddy:

    Enough of that, I think.

94. I fail to understand why, if you were inflating your stats, it would be a big scandal. You don’t run ads here. Who exactly is being defrauded?

    Don’t these guys have better things to worry about?

95. Apparently not, CLP. Is a puzzlement, indeed.

96. Thanks, John, for fixing the colors. I can read my previews now!

97. Long way downthread but: Floored re MRAL, I would point out that the world is not divided into good guys and bad guys or nice vs. nasty…

    Side note: is it sad or awesome that I now recognise popular XKCDs by their number alone? :D

98. I do analysis of user behaviors and trends professionally. If there is one axiom I have learned when it comes to web data, it’s that while you can’t believe a number, you can believe a trend.

    So is it 30,000,000? Maybe. There are too many variables in both technology and methodology to be sure, but you can get a general sense of overall scale of users. If you’re in the seven zeros range, thats a good show in all respects.

    The real question, though, is “is that number, whatever it is, growing?” If yes, you’re doing well.

99. what was the peak viewership for a day? I would think it probably varies depending on the topic and whether this topic gets re-posted somewhere else. Such as days when you have an interview or something like that.

100. There is a techy news site called slashdot.org that gets very high traffic. There is a saying in the community you got ‘slashdot’ted’. so if there is a blurb about you and you get a link to your site, you get lots of attention. I wonder if people John talks about get very large spikes in viewership.

     btw, slashdot is a good site. Not political. Just tech news.

101. Guess, actually I’ve mostly heard that phrase used to mean “your site is down due to the excessive amount of traffic generated by Slashdot.” I’ve even heard it used to describe the state of being overtrafficked when there’s no particular connection to Slashdot.

102. Imagine 50K traffic in 2008. Thanks Mr. Moore.
     Congrats John.

103. John, I’m a longtime fan of your blog and that Vox Day guy sounds like a straight-up lunatic, but to be honest, it seems like you’re going to an awful lot of trouble here to avoid just saying “I exaggerated my traffic a few times on Twitter. Sorry.”

     The idea that “up to” is somehow implied in the language of those tweets is a stretch. The idea that Twitter’s length limit is justification for excluding it … is also kind of a stretch. And the idea that it’s somehow OK to give the wrong information on Twitter as long as the right information is somewhere on your website, come on, really?

     Suppose I tweeted “Scalzi’s blog gets only 5k visitors” and then had a page on my site where I said the same thing with “…on its slowest days” at the end. And when called on it I responded with hundreds of words about how stats are complicated, Twitter is a constrained medium, etc etc. Would your fans take any of that seriously? I certainly hope not.

104. Peter:

     “but to be honest, it seems like you’re going to an awful lot of trouble here to avoid just saying ‘I exaggerated my traffic a few times on Twitter. Sorry.'”

     Meh. It’s more like “A certain group of obnoxious morons are losing their shit because they’re looking for things to lose their shit about over me, here’s some details about the latest version of their shit loss.”

     “The idea that ‘up to’ is somehow implied in the language of those tweets is a stretch”

     I didn’t say that it was, so the suggestion I have is incorrect. The more correct implication is that since I give detailed information about my stats here on my site, I’m not going to sweat it if I occasionally say on Twitter that I get 50K visitors a day, and anyone who does may be a bit more involved than absolutely necessary. But even at that level, I have also pointed to my stats discussion here from Twitter. So even there, the implication that I am lying about my stats on Twitter is, shall we say, a selective reading.

     “Suppose I tweeted ‘Scalzi’s blog gets only 5k visitors’ and then had a page on my site where I said the same thing with “…on its slowest days” at the end. And when called on it I responded with hundreds of words about how stats are complicated, Twitter is a constrained medium, etc etc. Would your fans take any of that seriously? I certainly hope not.”

     Honestly? I don’t think any of my fans would give a shit. Lots of people say things about me on Twitter and elsewhere; they’re aware of it but I would imagine they filter it out as noise. Unless I point to it, I suspect most don’t care (most probably wouldn’t care even after I pointed to it, mind you). And if I did point to your assertion, I would probably then also point to my stats discussion here.

     Now, for the record, and if you’re curious: In the last 30 days, the lowest number of visitors (as recorded by the WordPress stats software) was August 24th, when I got 6,117 visitors. The highest number was two days later, when I got 78,000. The numbers do bounce around. So if you are going to go on Twitter and say I get only a certain number of visitors, I’d go with 6K rather than 5K.