"Views" count on Flickr rising despite that all photos have been set to private

January 17, 2008 9:37 AM

Flickr newbie question: All of my photos are private. Why does the number of "views" at http://www.flickr.com/photos/[my Flickr username]/ keep going up despite that at http://www.flickr.com/photos/[my Flickr username]/popular-views/ it says nobody has viewed my photos?

I registered for Flickr a week or so ago and want to use it purely for storage and backup. I set almost all of my photos to private upon uploading them; I missed a few, which I set to private several minutes later. I'm sure I haven't missed any now, as I've logged out to check. I've experimented to see if looking at photos myself raises the view count, and it doesn't seem to. None of my photos, as far as I can tell, have any views, and neither do the two sets between which all of them are divided: it's just the little gray number to the right of where it says "Your photos." That's at 10 now, up from 9, up from 6, up from 3. Any ideas what's happening?

posted by electric water kettle to computers & internet (13 comments total)

I have two Yahoo usernames and thus two Flickr usernames. Sometimes I forget which one I'm logged in as and I view my own photos under the other username, thus raising the view count.
posted by desjardins at 9:41 AM on January 17

Why does the number of "views" at http://www.flickr.com/photos/[my Flickr username]/ keep going up despite that at http://www.flickr.com/photos/[my Flickr username]/popular-views/ it says nobody has viewed my photos?

The first number is just how many people have viewed that page, not necessarily your photos.

So, if I landed on that page for some reason, maybe I was following a link on your name from somewhere else on flickr, and then saw that, oh, there are no photos on that page (because all your photos are private) - that would register as a view.
posted by vacapinta at 9:46 AM on January 17

web spiders?
posted by jozxyqk at 9:58 AM on January 17

Ditto vacapinta. If your friends and family go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/[my Flickr username] to see if you have new photos, it will log a view in total views. If they don't click on a specific picture or pictures, you'll have no additional views on individual photos.
posted by peep at 11:22 AM on January 17

Oh, never mind. I didn't notice you had them completely private.
posted by peep at 11:23 AM on January 17

Have you checked your stats?

It will give you a fine-grained look at referrers, views, etc, and see where/how/if people are getting in (Pro only)
posted by misterbrandt at 12:21 PM on January 17

If you submitted pictures to a group before making them private, they will still be visible to the people who are members of those groups. Could that be the case?
posted by KS at 1:05 PM on January 17

Hmmm, rereading your post that doesn't make sense either, since you never intended to share them.
posted by KS at 1:07 PM on January 17

Flickr staff checking out your pictures?
posted by Jupiter Jones at 1:21 PM on January 17

I was also going to say Flickr staff. They do occasionally check photos to see if you are breaking any part of the EULA. For example, my Flickr account is rated as "safe". Also, it is possible that it's a search engine hitting your pages to see if there is anything there, then leaving upon not finding anything to index.

If you have a Pro account, you have access to the stats for your account, they can tell you more about where visits are coming from. If you're a free user, I'm not sure if you can find that out.
posted by gemmy at 3:11 PM on January 17

No, Flickr staff do not check out private photos.

KS is right in that private photos submitted to groups are still visible.

Photostream page views are distinct from photo views. They have no correlation. My authority comes from being an active flickr member since a week after they launched. This has always been a common question on the Flickr forums.
posted by vacapinta at 3:18 PM on January 17

Vacapinta's explanation makes sense, and it sounds like s/he speaks from authority. Thanks, all!
posted by electric water kettle at 5:53 PM on January 17

I'm sure that Flickr policy is that Flickr staff do not check out private photos. I am also sure that staff don't always follow policy. There were some stories floating around the interblags a few months ago about the Facebook staff accessing the pages of people they know. Most of them are probably honest employees, but there's always going to be some who don't care about privacy and do what they want to because they don't think they'll be caught. That said, this isn't necessarily what's going on. In fact, it's most likely one of the other explanations on here. It is possible, though.
posted by Jupiter Jones at 8:00 AM on January 18