General Questions about TE

[Cybermaster]

Hi,

I have a couple questions, and I hope to get a few answers..

1. What is productivity (Prod TG) based on ?? Actually I would like to know how you calculate the productivity - which formula you use? ?? (I guess, clicks TG / uniques in = prod , or ?? )

2. Does the script counts "unique in's" per site, or global ??
I mean, if "partner X" sends me "visitor A", and couple hours later, "partner Y" send me the same "visitor A" (with same ip address), does the script add 1 hit to each partner, or only to the first who sent me "visitor A" ??

3. As I have already asked before on ICQ, is there any way (option) I can transfer (automatically or manually) my old stats (from my old script) to TE ?? I don't want to loose all my stats (total in, total out, clicks)..
It's not a problem if I have to do it manually, change some files or similar, just tell me how..(write a HowTo transfer stats to TE).

Thanks,

[texpert]

1. Prod TG = Clk TG / Incoming raws

2. It's per surfer. If surfer was already on your site earlier that day and then one of your trades send that same surfer to your site, it will be counted as "raw", because he already visited your site.

3. That won't be that easy unless u have some experience with binary files and C structures, because this is how TE database is made. I can put this feature on a TODO list, but if you would like us to implement this feature as priority, you can buy 1 copy and we can arrange it.

[Cybermaster]

1. Is there actually any good reason why you calculate productivity this way ?? All other scripts count productivity based on uniques (Click TG / uniques in). For me it looks like this script is made primary for "raw traffic trades", but a lot of people trade only uniques.
It's ok, to see productivity based on incoming raws, but then you should, at least, also have the option to see productivity based on unique in's.

Tip: (for next version) - add the option to display productivity in percent % (Click TG / unique in * 100)

2. Also here, for people who trade mainly unique and not raw traffic, it would be better if the script would count uniques per site.

3. You should definitely add this feature as soon as possible, this would make it much easier for other webmasters to change their script, and start using Trade Expert.

Thanks!!

[texpert]

1. Is there actually any good reason why you calculate productivity this way ?? All other scripts count productivity based on uniques (Click TG / uniques in). For me it looks like this script is made primary for "raw traffic trades", but a lot of people trade only uniques.
It's ok, to see productivity based on incoming raws, but then you should, at least, also have the option to see productivity based on unique in's.

Tip: (for next version) - add the option to display productivity in percent % (Click TG / unique in * 100)

2. Also here, for people who trade mainly unique and not raw traffic, it would be better if the script would count uniques per site.

3. You should definitely add this feature as soon as possible, this would make it much easier for other webmasters to change their script, and start using Trade Expert.

Thanks!!

1. I'm not sure how much experience you have with trade scripts, but this is just not the case. Some scripts count productivity based on raws and others on uniques. When it comes to traffic trading there is no difference at all. It's just a matter of preference and what you're used to. No other difference at all. All trade scripts will send out (to your trades) "uniques only" unless surfer clicks on the perm link / toplist several times. So no, u got it all wrong, it's not made for raw traffic trading.

2. What u mean? TE tracks both ,raws and uniques. Did u take a look at the different interfaces (overview templates), did u try to create your own interfaces where u can choose from tons of different columns? You can display raw & unique columns for both "hourly" and "last24h" sections.

3. Reply to your Tip: This is again a matter of preference. Some trade scripts will display productivity in percents and others in decimals. If productivity is displayed e.g. as 1.69 or 169, what difference does it make?

The idea of having an option to switch between raw and unique productivity display is old, but it is not that simple to implement it.
It is not enough to simply add an option in the overview section to display productivity calculation that you prefer. We would also have to link it with capping module, custom algorithm, toplist etc. I don't really think it is worth it, because it is again just a matter of preference. The issue is that you're simply used to it from your previous trade script. If u will use TE long enough and then switch to another trade script, u will complain why don't they display productivity calculation in TE form (total clicks / total incoming traffic).

[Cybermaster]

1. so far in all the scripts that I've used, the productivity was/is calculated based on unique visits, and actually this is the first script I saw that count productivity based on raw, so this is a little bit confusing..

here is an example: (last 24 hours)
my current script - unique in: ~7500 clicks: ~9000 prod: 1.20 or 120%
with trade expert - raw in: ~12000 clickTG: ~9000 prod: 0.75 or 75%

So you can see it's confusing, I would think there is something wrong, or my partner is sending me some shitty traffic...
I'm sure that after some time I would figure out what is a "good productivity" value in trade expert, so that I can orientate towards this value..
However, it would be easier to get used if the prod would be based on uniques as with most of the other scripts....just my opinion...


2. Looks like you understood me wrong..I know the script can show raw in/out, unique in/out, I'm not talking about this..
I talked about this:

It's per surfer. If surfer was already on your site earlier that day and then one of your trades send that same surfer to your site, it will be counted as "raw", because he already visited your site.

I would suggest that you track unique IPs per site, not per network (or per surfer like you said).
Most scripts track ip + refdomain. So if an IP come twice from the same domain, it will be counted as raw, but will be counted as unique if it comes from another domain to your site.
Example: if your site get a user from "domain A" and the same user with the same IP, only some minutes later, comes from "domain B", your tracker should increase the "unique in" counter for both of your partners, or there will be always a difference between your "in stats", and the "partners out stats".

Another example:
Site A has 10k uniques per day and are sending out 10k uniques to it's trades each day.
Site B sent Site A 3000 uniques in one day according to their stats.
Site A sent Site B 3000 uniques in one day according to their stats.

Since site A get 30% of it's traffic from Site B, then 30% of the traffic they send back, will originally come from Site B, which means, Site A thinks it has sent 3000 unique hits out, while Site B only records 2100, since 30% of the traffic has already been on their site that day.

This is causing a lot of differences between trade stats. And if you have very few trades, and some trades that are sending you a very high percentage of your daily traffic, then the difference between stats will be a lot higher.

To avoid this, what you should/need to do, is make your script track what a domain a visitor came from (uniques per site), not per surfer..

I hope it's now a little bit clearer about what I wrote last time..

All the best!!

[texpert]

1. I've seen both productivity calculated based on raws and uniques. It might be a bit confusing for you at the start since u're used to productivity calculated from uniques, but u would
be confused just the same if u would switch from TE to some other script after a longer period of time. Anyway, i know it might be confusing for you or someone else as well, but
like i said, we were giving it some thoughts, but the issue is if we directly change calculation to uniques, all current users will be confused. If we add an option where u can choose based on what productivity is displayed (raws or uniques), that means a lot of work and perhaps even more confusion. But i'm sure most users would be extremely happy, since if we would do that their productivity would appear to be higher, but in fact it would remain the same

2. I can see what u're saying about tracking uniques, but if u ask me, this is hidding from the truth. Each trade script will always send out uniques only. You should be happy that you can see the difference between incoming raws and the actual uniques. This way you know which of your trades trade a lot of traffic with your other trade partners. And since you have this information ,you can use TE's "do not send to" feature to send your traffic to trades that are not trading huge with your other top trades etc. You're relying too much on uniques and you're worrying too much about "stats difference". If someone tells you, he has sent you 10,000 outgoings, you should check both incoming raws and incoming uniques. Incoming raws will tell you how much he actually sent and incoming uniques will tell you if his traffic is unique to your site, which is very important info for you.

[WillWank]

1. so far in all the scripts that I've used, the productivity was/is calculated based on unique visits, and actually this is the first script I saw that count productivity based on raw, so this is a little bit confusing..

As my alternative I use a php based script and it do calculate productivity in the exact same way as TE

here is an example: (last 24 hours)
my current script - unique in: ~7500 clicks: ~9000 prod: 1.20 or 120%
with trade expert - raw in: ~12000 clickTG: ~9000 prod: 0.75 or 75%

So you can see it's confusing, I would think there is something wrong, or my partner is sending me some shitty traffic...
I'm sure that after some time I would figure out what is a "good productivity" value in trade expert, so that I can orientate towards this value..

I asume you have several tradepartners and that some are sending you non human, badly written bots, etc. is absolutely a possibility. Having both unique and raw numbers is a must imho. A good productivity number can mean so much, a 0.7 "value" and up is good. An other way of seeing it could be a ClickT above 100%, based on raw.