Blubrry Statistics Compared to Other Statistics

Blubrry Stats are designed to be an accurate measurement of media downloads by listeners/viewers. Other stats packages and services (such as those that come with web hosting packages) are not designed to specifically measure media file downloads. Blubrry Statistics are first calculated by unique IP address which is easy to explain and audit. Blubrry Statistics then further analyze each countable download based on both the user agent and geographical information. The final results exclude web bots, crawlers and multiple downloads from the same network location. The final calculation is then adjusted to compensate for known Internet Service Providers (ISP’s), universities and large businesses that have many users under the same IP address. We go to great lengths to make sure our stats are the most accurate media statistics available.

There are many reasons that your Blubrry media statistics will not match other statistics packages.

First and foremost is how you have the redirect URL implemented on your site and podcast feed. The redirect URL, which you get in your blubrry.com account under “measure”, must be in front of all media URL anywhere it is available. For instance: If you have it in your feed but also have a download link on your site but don’t have the redirect in front of the link address, you will only be measuring downloads from the feed. If you have it on the link but not in your feed, you will only be measuring downloads from the site, but not from the feed.

Feedburner’s statistics measure a different unit then blubrry stats do. Blubrry Stats measure media downloads. Feedburner measures how many people in the last 24-48 hours are subscribed to your feed though Feedburner. This does not count how many downloads you have. It also doesn’t count how many computers (people) are subscribed to your direct feed, the one you have “burned” at feedburner.com. FeedBurner never counts downloads that occur directly from your web site.

The web stats package, such as Webalizer or AWStats, process your web site logs to make the data readable. It records ALL requests for all files on your server without regard for who or how the media is consumed. This leads to a RAW total of how many times the media file was requested, lending to greatly inflated download numbers for each media file. Web statistics count web bots, spiders as well as multiple download requests from the same computer (which typically occur when playing via a streaming device). Web statistics will give you an accurate measurement on how much bandwidth your server uses, but it will not accurately tell you who is consuming your media from what device.

Blubrry Statistics are for individuals, business and advertisers who seek an accurate picture of how Internet media is being consumed. It is not an accurate measurement of the amount of bandwidth used, and cannot be used for comparing billing issues with your CDN. If you have excessive bandwidth traffic than compared to Blubrry Statistics, it is typically caused by consumers of the media playing the media via a play-streaming device such as an Internet Connected TV, Google TV, Apple TV, or Flash/HTML5 based players. Anytime the user pauses, seeks or rewinds the video, additional bandwidth usage will result, all the while Blubrry Statistics will only count the download once.