The Email Open Statistic Is Incorrect, Another Failure From WordPress

I have known for some time that the statistics provided by WordPress are not accurate and today it was cemented in my mind. When you publish a post it goes to each follower including those who subscribe to receive the post via email. The catch is that WordPress counts all of your posts as email which is the opposite of what the explanation of what the statistics are.

I have around 20-25 followers who receive my posts via email yet today I looked at a post from a few days ago and it showed 917 received my posts along with the number of email opens and unique opens, whatever that means. If you take the numbers at face value that means that out of close to 4K followers only 917 received the posts and that even fewer read the posts and fewer are commenting.

Commenting I understand, I don’t comment on every post I read but I have a hard time swallowing that the community has turned off receiving my posts. Maybe this is naive of me but when I see the level of long-time followers, new followers, comments, and the level of conversations I’m having with many people the number isn’t consistent.

This is no surprise, I have a long-time follower friend whose husband is a Statistical Engineer and he stated that the statistics on WordPress are inaccurate. This is not a rant, just an explanation for others who are perplexed with their statistics.

I’ve been blogging on WordPress for 24 years and have spent countless hours frustrated working with the Happiness Engineers to understand the issue I was having. Many, many years ago asking for help became futile and I gave up on contacting them. I did recently contact WordPress to let them know about the Bots that were enjoying my archives but as usual, I received no response. When I have a question now, I ask the community or go to Copilot for an explanation. Copilot has helped me understand what the statistics mean at a high level however the answers don’t apply to WordPress.

I hope this information helps others make sense out of what doesn’t make sense. :)

Melinda