# Noticing a strange pattern. How high are profile views on your community?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [5 يوليو 2016، 1:40ص UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833 "2016-07-05T01:40:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [5 يوليو 2016، 1:40ص UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/1 "2016-07-05T01:40:30Z")
I manage a couple of communities, they are both the same size (both member count and active members) and both run on Discourse.
In one of those communities we get ~100 User Profile Views per week and in the other we get ~17.5k per week.
That number is almost inconceivably different, so I’m curious to know whether anyone else is experiencing something similar.
For context, these communities both sit around the 1500 member mark.
Edit: This seems to be a relatively recent phenomenon. I’m suspicious.
Further edit: This could be [merged onto this topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-profile-views-dramatic-increase-in-count/38557), which never reached a resolution but may be the same issue.
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### Author:  [@erlend\_sh](https://meta.discourse.org/u/erlend_sh)
#### Post date: [13 يوليو 2016، 10:33ص UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/2 "2016-07-13T10:33:20Z")
That is indeed mighty strange. Do you have that site hooked up with Google Analytics or something similar so you could cross-examine this data? Maybe it’s just some search engine crawler gone bonkers.
If you suspect malicious activity please contact us privately and we’ll look into it.
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [13 يوليو 2016، 5:44م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/3 "2016-07-13T17:44:59Z")
Hi @erlend_sh
Thanks for the response.
Yeah, I do have GA hooked up but I’m not smart enough with it to cross examine. Help?
What I can see is that for the same time period covered by the graph above, there were only ~100 views across the two highest ranking profiles (assuming I’m querying the right URLs). It doesn’t add up.
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### Author:  [@Pad\_Pors](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Pad_Pors)
#### Post date: [14 يوليو 2016، 4:15م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/4 "2016-07-14T16:15:20Z")
we have a community of 900 users resulted in 80 profile view per week. profile view is not allowed to anonymous users in our forum. maybe this option has been set differently in those forums.
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [25 يوليو 2016، 9:41م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/5 "2016-07-25T21:41:07Z")
We do have that setting left on, for a number of valid reasons, but I’ll turn it off as an experiment and see what happens!
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [11 أغسطس 2016، 5:47م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/6 "2016-08-11T17:47:39Z")
Updating for future posterity. Changing the above setting made no difference.
18766 profile views in the last 7 days.
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### Author:  [@BCHK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BCHK)
#### Post date: [11 أغسطس 2016، 6:54م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/7 "2016-08-11T18:54:04Z")
Its interesting that at almost the same day - my user profile views have gone through the roof - sounds like a systemic / spammer issue:
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [11 أغسطس 2016، 7:12م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/8 "2016-08-11T19:12:18Z")
Agreed. I’m only seeing it on one of my instances.
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### Author:  [@cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cpradio)
#### Post date: [11 أغسطس 2016، 7:13م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/9 "2016-08-11T19:13:47Z")
Out of curiosity, are they on the same Discourse version? Different versions? If so, which ones?
Are they both using SSO? What differences between them can you deduce?
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [11 أغسطس 2016، 7:16م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/10 "2016-08-11T19:16:28Z")
The one with the issue:
Hosted with Discourse official hosting so always up to date. (1.7.0 beta1)
WordPress SSO
The one without the issue:
Hosted with a third party and still running 1.5.3
Also running WP SSO although very differently to above
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### Author:  [@BCHK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BCHK)
#### Post date: [11 أغسطس 2016، 7:21م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/11 "2016-08-11T19:21:00Z")
> [@HAWK](#):
>
> The one with the issue:Hosted with Discourse official hosting so always up to date. (1.7.0 beta1)
Yes - same with me. I have two forums hosted with Discourse and they are both having the same issue. Here is the other forum stats:
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### Author:  [@cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cpradio)
#### Post date: [11 أغسطس 2016، 7:24م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/12 "2016-08-11T19:24:27Z")
> [@HAWK](#):
>
> Hosted with a third party and still running 1.5.3
This is the most likely reason as to why it isn’t exhibiting that behavior, as IIRC most of the discussion on this topic has been a “notice a spike in profile views after recent upgrade”, but I may be simplifying that some.
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [11 أغسطس 2016، 7:25م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/13 "2016-08-11T19:25:54Z")
It would be interesting to see how many people that are Discourse hosted and on the latest version are experiencing this.
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### Author:  [@cpradio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cpradio)
#### Post date: [11 أغسطس 2016، 7:27م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/14 "2016-08-11T19:27:50Z")
[https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-profile-views-dramatic-increase-in-count/38557](https://meta.discourse.org/t/user-profile-views-dramatic-increase-in-count/38557)
Ah, here is the other discussion I was thinking of, which indicated it didn’t only impact hosted discourse instances.
I do know at SP, we noticed the spike too and for the record, we are Discourse hosted (and on or close to near latest as of yesterday).
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [11 أغسطس 2016، 9:30م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/15 "2016-08-11T21:30:43Z")
Can you audit this profile view increment code tomorrow @eviltrout and see if anything could be up with it?
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### Author:  [@eviltrout](https://meta.discourse.org/u/eviltrout)
#### Post date: [12 أغسطس 2016، 7:51م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/16 "2016-08-12T19:51:16Z")
I took a look at the code and it was last changed in February so I am skeptical that it is code related. Most of it looks pretty straightforward, so I don’t see why this would happen.
It does use the ip address of the user when anonymous to prevent knocking the count up too high, so it’s possible that the IP is not being passed in correctly anymore due to a change in proxies or something. However, I suspect we’d see that on all Discourse sites we host, not just some of them.
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### Author:  [@ljpp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ljpp)
#### Post date: [12 أغسطس 2016، 8:40م UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/17 "2016-08-12T20:40:41Z")
I am on 1.5 stable, and I notice there are occasional days when the number of profile views are 5-10x higher than the usual level. But not constant increase like yours - single days, few times a month.
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [15 أغسطس 2016، 1:54ص UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/18 "2016-08-15T01:54:41Z")
> [@eviltrout](#):
>
> However, I suspect we’d see that on all Discourse sites we host, not just some of them.
Is it definitely not on all?
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### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [15 أغسطس 2016، 2:13ص UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/19 "2016-08-15T02:13:25Z")
AFAIK there are 2 Settings that might be involved.
> hide user profiles from public [default not checked]
> Disable user cards, user profiles and user directory for anonymous users.
> user profile view duration hours [default 8]
> Count a new user profile view once per IP/User every N hours
The first could be tried if you’re willing to experiment at risk of upsetting non-logged-in visitors. But if it drops that would suggest that a lot of views are coming from anons.
The second might be if you had tweaked the setting lower, or maybe there’s a bug somewhere interfering with the timing.
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [15 أغسطس 2016، 2:32ص UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833/20 "2016-08-15T02:32:45Z")
> [@Mittineague](#):
>
> The first could be tried if you’re willing to experiment at risk of upsetting non-logged-in visitors. But if it drops that would suggest that a lot of views are coming from anons.
Yeah, I did that several weeks ago. No change.[quote=“Mittineague, post:19, topic:46833”]
The second might be if you had tweaked the setting lower, or maybe there’s a bug somewhere interfering with the timing.
[/quote]
This is still on the default.
[Next page](https://meta.discourse.org/t/noticing-a-strange-pattern-how-high-are-profile-views-on-your-community/46833.md?page=2)