Hm.. page views?

[Lune the Guardian]

Hi, sorry if this is in the wrong section, but I figured I'd ask people that probably know the answer :)

So... I've had two consistent readers for my fic so far, and a third one has started posting, but I see a lot more than 3 new page views every time I put up a chapter. The view count shoots up at least 20 times. I know if I view my own post it doesn't count the page views at all. But how do page views work for other people?

Let's say person A visits the page after I make a new post. This increments the view counter by 1. If person A refreshes the page, will this increment the view counter again?

I'm just puzzled, either I'm misunderstanding how page views work, or I have quite a few lurkers reading my fic. Here's to hoping it's the latter. ^^;

Anyway, answer would be appreciated, thanks!

[Goodnight Seadra]

I do think if say person A refreshes the page, it counts in the view counter thing. Also, I thought when you do view your work, it counts too (remembers one rule from another forum to not keep checking your thread to bring up the view count). ^^;

And I think all of us have some lurkers reading our fics (checks to see almost no reviews yet for my fic). XD;

[Asilynne]

I did some tests, on a thread I made and on this one, to see how pageviews works.

On mine, I looked at the # of pageviews I had and then went inside my topic, and then I went back out (not by pressing the back button but by loading the parent forum fresh) and it didnt count my view towards the viewcount. Then I tested it with this topic, it said it had 16 views so I clicked on it, and refreshed the page, and went out of it and it still said 16 >.> so Im not sure exactly how they work, like whether it counts one person one time a day? Thats the only thing I can think of, so if thats true then you must have a lot of lurkers over a period of days :D

[Lune the Guardian]

Hey you're right, none of my viewing of other people's pages is registering. o_O. I was going to say perhaps you need to make a post in the topic, but that makes absolutely no sense because I see posts that have no replies and yet have many page views.

I don't know if it's lurkers or not that's causing the view count to go up, but I do wish I had a Terran Science Vessel to search for em all :P

[Asilynne]

And now this topic says 25 views o.O whats going on?! lol We need Chris The Master to explain :P

[Gavin Luper]

I'm not entirely sure how it works, either, but aside from lurkers I THINK that search engine spiders might also play a part in increasing the view count of a thread.

I was under the impression that refreshing the page counts as a new view as well, though I could be wrong.

It's universal, I think. Everyone gets twenty views corresponding with each reply, or something like that.

[mistysakura]

Yeah, I strongly suspect search spiders. I kept that to myself for a long while because I didn't want anyone to come out and confirm it (which it hasn't been)and I wanted hope :P, but since you asked...

[mr_pikachu]

Additionally, every forum still registers as being "unread" until you've checked every unread thread within it (or been inactive enough to be logged out and logged back in), so some people might navigate to all the threads and navigate back out just to make keeping track of new posts easier.

Furthermore, we Fanfic mods check every thread periodically to make sure there aren't any developing flame wars, so that boosts some view counts as well. :sweat2:

[Greyfox]

The way I've come to understand it is that whenever your unique IP address views a page, it adds to the tally of page views. However, that unique IP cannot log a new page view until another post is made in the thread.

Topic Creator posts topic and views it. Page Views: 1.
Topic Creator refreshes topic. Page Views: 1.
Forumer A views topic. Page Views: 2.
Forumer A replies to topic and views it again. Page Views: 3.
Topic Creator views topic. Page Views: 4.
Forumer B views topic. Page Views: 5.
Forumer B replies to topic and views it again. Page Views: 6.

And so on.

-Grey

[mr_pikachu]

Actually, I recall instances in which I've posted a new topic, navigated back to the main forum, and instantly had two views without any members, guests, or even spiders apparently playing a role. Could that be due to the forum thinking I viewed the thread before it actually acquired the first post, then registering the post and my automatic navigation to it? I'm kind of curious, now that we're on the subject.

[Dragonfree]

The forum updates the thread view counts once an hour to reduce the server load - hence why you can enter and exit a thread and the view count doesn't change. I know this because I run a vBulletin forum too and there's an option for it in the admin CP, with a recommendation to use the once-an-hour setting for larger forums. As for there being two views when you've just created a thread, I'm not sure how that can happen unless two people viewed the thread before you had fully loaded the forum main page and the moment of the thread count updating happened to pass just then, which seems awfully unlikely. o.O

All views, even by the same person many times, are definitely counted; my forum has a hack that keeps track of the individual users who have viewed a thread, and that number is significantly lower than the view count.

[Lune the Guardian]

Oh, thanks for the confirmation Dragonfree! That makes lots of sense to me now.

I may not have lurkers like I thought, then. ^_^;