Information requested--flickr.com

I hope this question does not in any way offend NPN.
flickr.com----I have many of my photos posted there.
Recently I've seen a spike in visits. The issue about that bothers me is I have 1 or 2 'visits' that go through the whole library. That seems somewhat unreasonable.
The 'stats' section shows "unknown" sources accessing the site.
The photos there can be copied. I usually put in a smaller version of the original to reduce pirating printable copies, but....???
Does anyone use flickr.com and have an opinion as to what might be occurring?
the fisch

Hi Larry , I use Flickr all the time and see spikes upwards to 100,000. visits at times . I get on average about 40 a day going through my whole stream ,heaven knows why but they do. The unknown site links are usually harmless as they are just versions of explore and flickr stream. I keep tabs on where my images are going and have yet to have a problem with flickr and have been on there since 2009. Though I have had stock agents and mags as well as blogs and sales from my images being found on flickr. Hope that helps .What is your flickr user name ?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40968863@N04/ here is mine !

Thanks for the info. I've never had much traffic outside of friends and a few on sites I post. In the last 3 years only about 60,000 visits. 100,000 at a time is out of this world.
The unknown, which went all the way through my entire photos, was puzzling.
My stuff is not that great. I bet yours are outstanding. I somewhat use flickr.com as a 'cloud' to store photos although most of them are reduced in size.
site: flickr.com/photos/syzygyphoto
the fisch

Lorna, visited your site. You have a lot of photo venues... the fisch

I would not say my work is worth going through every image for but when an image of mine gets the explore page is when I get the biggest spikes.
Jack of all trades and master of non is my motto !! I just can't settle into anyone area of photography other than learning to try and master light,form and pattern.

I've been getting some random spikes lately... thousands of views every couple days. Flickr's lousy stat tracking can't pinpoint the source, so I'm guessing it's a search engine spider.

Max

Max, I concur; something is not quite right.
As usual, the posting of a photo leads to loss of control of the product. But, not being a professional it is better to enjoy and be enjoyed. Some people, of magnanimous character, post in the 'commons'.
I wonder how professionals hold out with the technology of today??? Niche marketing???
The quality at NPN far exceeds most of the posts on flickr.
the fisch

I believe that Flickr has changed the way visits are counted. If I understand correctly, a photo is now counted as viewed, and included in the statistics, if the thumbnail was displayed in the browser window of the visitor. In the previous way, the picture page had actually to be displayed in the browser window. I believe this change occurred with the new interface. There were quite a few comments on the steep increase in the number of visitors. As already pointed out, if a photo "makes it onto Explore", there will of course be a spike.

Twice I've heard "Explore". What is that exactly?
Has anyone on NPN made a contact for a photo through flickr.com?
the fisch

Larry I send you a Flickr email as I found two of your images on explore. Explore is like a photo feature for the day ,everyday they pick 500 images from the day before up loads .

http://fiveprime.org/flickr_hvmnd.cgi?search_type=Interestingness&textinput=2013-11-21