I've recently noticed that my comic's ranking seems to change in real-time, fluctuating by one or two positions several times in the day. Previously it used to change just once (in the morning) to reflect the previous day's pageviews.

Has there been a change in the way the rankings are calculated/reported?

Also, my DD Alerter takes itself offline far more often than it used to. Not a huge issue, but I'm wondering if it's just a coincidence or whether it's somehow linked to the above?

I pq'd Spang about this a while ago and he said they actually change 2 or so times a day and usually when a comics hits are very close. If this is recent or not i did not ask. (I'm guessing it is)


But yeah i seem to go down one or up one every now and then.

Nope, not recent. It's always done that. Thought it may be more than twice a day. I can't remember.

The DD alerter has to do with the site going down periodically. The server is seriously bogged down; you may have noticed that it logs you out periodically.

Actually, last year when Pinky TA was in the number one spot, I looked a lot at comic stats and hits. The changes in rankings for comics in the top 20 would actually only start to happen about 3 to five days after they'd had a change in stats. It would vary though, but 3 days seemed too be the median time for changes in hits to be reflected in rankings of those comics.

But that was just from hits. I didn't see the uniques, which is what really matters. Maybe it generally takes 3 to 5 days for the uniques to increase or decrease after you get a big change in hits? What a strange idea :)

We've been on the T10 since 2006, and I've always noticed it happening throughout the course of a day. Just not sure how many times.

From what I've seen, unique hits aren't counted until the next day, though. So I think other factors, such as comments, updates and page views come into play.

Well from what I noticed, a comic could be getting huge hits, but wouldn't move up a rank until three days later. Like from 3rd to second or second to first…
So that probably had to do with movement of viewers coming in: the initial uniques all going through the archives and then later on even more uniques but they probably didn't look too far through the comic archives before going away maybe? :)

-so the comic didn't move up a rank initially, because most of those hits were just archive viewing, even though that looked like a huge spike

The point isn't so much how it's calculated (I accepted long ago that nobody really knows!) but what's actually changed recently.

My comic's rank used to change only once per day - in the morning. But, for the past week or so, it's been changing far more frequently - not twice a day as has been suggested here, but maybe two or three times an hour.

SpANG
Nope, not recent. It's always done that. Thought it may be more than twice a day. I can't remember.

The DD alerter has to do with the site going down periodically. The server is seriously bogged down; you may have noticed that it logs you out periodically.

I was wondering what was up with that! It's happened to me a bunch of times today.

SpANG
The DD alerter has to do with the site going down periodically. The server is seriously bogged down; you may have noticed that it logs you out periodically.

I'd been wondering about that. I thought it was just my crappy internet connection here. I haven't been on because I can't stay logged on for more than 10 minutes at a time.

DAJB
The point isn't so much how it's calculated (I accepted long ago that nobody really knows!) but what's actually changed recently.

My comic's rank used to change only once per day - in the morning. But, for the past week or so, it's been changing far more frequently - not twice a day as has been suggested here, but maybe two or three times an hour.

Why can't someone just e-mail platinum? Do they not know either? Well i'm in favor of it….my rank just went up yet again kekekeke

Yeah i do think this is fishy really, my rank has never even once changed since being here and then i find out ‘no no it changes 2x a day’ which i've never seen happen in the ‘browse’ section(i always checked since i wanted to see if craving control would ever gtfo)
This has got to be the server thing :/

I emailed Dylan. Since he's the one that wrote the code, he's the one to ask. He no longer works for PS, so it may be a while before we get a definitive answer on this.

The only things that oz and I were trying to say were the things we notice. YES, I've always seen it change. Since December 2005. I don't know how often, I was just speculating from my own experience.

It makes sense though, that positions fluctuate when one comic is really close in ranking to another. It's just a question of how often it updates.

It also may make sense that it seems to be updating more often because of the server issues.

lba

SpANG
The DD alerter has to do with the site going down periodically. The server is seriously bogged down; you may have noticed that it logs you out periodically.

I'd been wondering about that. I thought it was just my crappy internet connection here. I haven't been on because I can't stay logged on for more than 10 minutes at a time.

I think it's getting worse. It logged me out yesterday and I've been trying to log in since then, but it wouldn't let me until just now.

Hippie Van
I think it's getting worse. It logged me out yesterday and I've been trying to log in since then, but it wouldn't let me until just now.

lol!
That's because the site was totally down for over 12 hours :)
Volte fixed it for us ^_^

ozoneocean

Hippie Van
I think it's getting worse. It logged me out yesterday and I've been trying to log in since then, but it wouldn't let me until just now.

lol!
That's because the site was totally down for over 12 hours :)
Volte fixed it for us ^_^

He came back to fix it?
wow! that was cool of him!
Thanks Volte… whereever you are!

My artist dropped her account because she can't log on for more then fifteen seconds and this is months ago and when I was at her house every day I tried getting on and couldn't go more then a page or so in when I got logged out. One of my friends doesn't comment on my comic because the site logs him out too much so it's always been a major issue for me.

Sid The Merc
My artist dropped her account because she can't log on for more then fifteen seconds and this is months ago and when I was at her house every day I tried getting on and couldn't go more then a page or so in when I got logged out. One of my friends doesn't comment on my comic because the site logs him out too much so it's always been a major issue for me.

http://www.smackjeeves.com/
http://www.comicgenesis.com/
http://www.comicdish.com/
http://www.comicspace.com/
http://www.deviantart.com/



There's other comic sites, i myself am looking into my own domain(not because of this but just cuz i need too)
Also FFFFFFFFFFFF DD is so slow right now holy dipsticks.

Yeah, after some days, my ranking dropped by a lot… like hundreds. O_o
But it might not be related to your case since my comic's new… and er, hasn't been properly updated. *shame*

Not updating will do that to you. I climbed to the 250-300 range (in comic book/story), only to plummet to 700something after I had to go on a monthly hiatus. Seeing that I seem to get mostly readers outside of this site, putting up a banner in my sig didn't help much. :(

As for the site logging me out. Yep, happens a lot. Usually I leave it for an hour or two and try again. Sometimes it's just the specific areas (like stats for example, when I can click on anything else), sometimes it's the forums (when I try to edit my posts for example).

As for the stats… with my bad memory I can barely remember what was the first digit on the number, so I can't really say whether I jumped 10-20 places or not.