CONFUSED

[hope]

As We Happy Few has not had a terrible lot of feedback and I'm still terribly fond of it, I've been watching my google analytics to have warm fuzzies over just how many hits it's been getting (and digging out the occasional rec, hurrah).

BUT THIS CONFUSES ME, FLIST: The top referral domain for that story is community.livejournal.com, which makes sense - it's divided up between torch_wood, torchwood_fic and torchwood_house. BUT THEN, the bit that baffles me - the majority of the top ten referrers after that are people's friends pages. Like, seriously, the next two after the communities are two friends pages in particular - each of which bring AT LEAST one hit per day *for the past month*.

I am confounded. These people don't even have my friended, so they wouldn't be getting it from me (even if I did link to the story every day, which I don't). And links have not been posted on the communities listed above for at least a month. And generally, if there's been a rec somewhere that people are clicking on, there'll be a referral listed there from the particular entry. But there's not.

Any ideas?



ETA: tangent, but still related; I must say the most enjoyable feedback for this story has been in situations such as sitting having a quiet cuppa with someone who says wistfully out of the blue, "I wish I had a cloak made of ties."

Comments

[linaelyn.livejournal.com]

When I read my friendspage, I get communities interspersed with individual journals. If I click on a fic link from my friendspage, would that make the referring site be my friendspage?

Maybe these couple of frequent referrals are folks who don't have you friended, but who ADORE your story and read it EVERY DAY. Just a thought.

[hope]

. If I click on a fic link from my friendspage, would that make the referring site be my friendspage?

*nod* it would be, and I do get plenty of referrals like that, generally with one or two hits from that person's /friends page.

But consider how rapidly a flist changes - you wouldn't be able to click on that same community post every day because it'd very quickly disappear. Certainly by the time a month is out.

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

a few friends of mine sometimes put a link to a story they love in their linklists on their ljs to have the link handy right there... in which case it would show both on their friends page and on the front page of their lj, and imo they're more likely to use the link from the friends page layout margin, cos that's what they're reading.. no?

just a possibility.

[hope]

I thought it might be that too... but a visit to their LJs/flists reveals nothing!

[nixwilliams.livejournal.com]

what if it's flocked? would that make a difference?

[hope]

I don't think you can flock a links list. And I don't think sticky posts/backdated work on flist pages. And generally even if it was a flocked entry there'd be a referral from that particular entry.

So, maybe? But probably not?

[nixwilliams.livejournal.com]

i admit, i have no idea! sometimes i get referrals in a similar vein, and it's a mystery!