Developers had already linked this behavior to inflated weekly user counts.
Helium removed usage pings from the requests in a fix merged on Oct 24. Deployment was confirmed on Oct 26.
Then people started reporting install spikes.
helium-services#109
5/8
3 views
One developer asked: could the requests now be counted as new installs instead?
Their Nov 2 comment described the same Romania spike.
It’s a plausible explanation, but I haven’t found confirmation that this is what’s happening.
helium-services#108
6/8
3 views
@wukko, it would be awesome to get some insight on this.
helium-services#10
1 view
If you've been losing users over the last few days, this is why.
I'm not sure if someone else has already reported this somewhere. In case it hasn't, I thought I would share it here.
For the last few days, we've been seeing a pretty sharp user drop in the extension I maintain. Why, you may ask? It's because for the last two years, the people behind the Helium browser have been inflating user counts for browser extensions pretty aggressively. They are the reason why everyone has a suspicious number of users from "Sweden".
Someone finally called them out on it in the issue below, so they fixed the problem.
So if you've been losing users too, this is why.
helium-services#108
10 points · 6 comments
User count disappeared from my CWS listing after users spike
My extension LurkLoothad been growing steadily, at around 2.5k weekly users in mid-October. Then in about a week it jumped to over 20k:
preview.redd.it
The breakdown looks off: 44% of users are in Sweden, yet the top language is Russian (33%), and only 9% are in Russia. Ratings, reviews and support requests haven't changed at all, so I don't think these are real users.
It looks like the same thing described here, where the Helium browser apparently routes Chrome Web Store traffic through a proxy that inflates user counts: reddit.com
Now the user count has disappeared from my store listing:
preview.redd.it
I understand the CWS not wanting to show inflated numbers, but I didn't get any notice and I can't do anything about this from my side. Has anyone seen the count come back once the stats normalize? And has anyone contacted developer support about this and got a useful answer?
EDIT: I created a github issue at helium-services, where the source code for this extension proxy lives. First impression is that they do not care.
6 comments
Mentions
Developers had already linked this behavior to inflated weekly user counts. Helium removed usage pings from the requests in a fix merged on Oct 24. Deployment was confirmed on Oct 26. Then people started reporting install spikes. helium-services#109 5/8
One developer asked: could the requests now be counted as new installs instead? Their Nov 2 comment described the same Romania spike. It’s a plausible explanation, but I haven’t found confirmation that this is what’s happening. helium-services#108 6/8
@wukko, it would be awesome to get some insight on this. helium-services#10
If you've been losing users over the last few days, this is why. I'm not sure if someone else has already reported this somewhere. In case it hasn't, I thought I would share it here. For the last few days, we've been seeing a pretty sharp user drop in the extension I maintain. Why, you may ask? It's because for the last two years, the people behind the Helium browser have been inflating user counts for browser extensions pretty aggressively. They are the reason why everyone has a suspicious number of users from "Sweden". Someone finally called them out on it in the issue below, so they fixed the problem. So if you've been losing users too, this is why. helium-services#108
User count disappeared from my CWS listing after users spike My extension LurkLoothad been growing steadily, at around 2.5k weekly users in mid-October. Then in about a week it jumped to over 20k: preview.redd.it The breakdown looks off: 44% of users are in Sweden, yet the top language is Russian (33%), and only 9% are in Russia. Ratings, reviews and support requests haven't changed at all, so I don't think these are real users. It looks like the same thing described here, where the Helium browser apparently routes Chrome Web Store traffic through a proxy that inflates user counts: reddit.com Now the user count has disappeared from my store listing: preview.redd.it I understand the CWS not wanting to show inflated numbers, but I didn't get any notice and I can't do anything about this from my side. Has anyone seen the count come back once the stats normalize? And has anyone contacted developer support about this and got a useful answer? EDIT: I created a github issue at helium-services, where the source code for this extension proxy lives. First impression is that they do not care.