Just what constitutes a story view?

[designatedvictim]

TL;DR:

What counts as 'view' in the stats?


I am in the midst of a simple experiment that, in a very short time, has pretty much confirmed what I was after in the experiment. (More views based on category.)

My latest, A Week of Sunrises (the work I've referred to as a 'palette-cleanser' in other posts), a stand-alone, went up today.

To see how publishing in different categories impacts views and scores, I put it in I/T. High traffic, high views.

It took about twelve hours to recover from its initial 3-vote but it quickly clawed its way into Red H territory.

In only 16 hours or so, it has over 8700 views and 25 votes. My next highest view count is only 4500 since September in NaN. (Yes, I know that once you drop off the New list, views become much scarcer.)

What I've always wondered is, is there any idea how multiple-paged stories impact view counts? Or does it at all?

Quoted below is a reasonable comment by EB from an older post indicating that 'views' are first-page clicks. And views doesn't indicate read-through rates.

Does page count impact the view count (beyond the probability that high-page-counts may discourage many readers from viewing every page)?

A View is click into the first page. The person could click out immediately, but it still counts as a View. Don't ever ever correlate those who click in as complete Reads of your story. Chaptered stories give you some idea how many finish (the View count of the last chapter, roughly), but with a standalone story, you have zero idea.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Does page count impact the view count (beyond the probability that high-page-counts may discourage many readers from viewing every page)?

No. If you click on the subsequent pages, the View count doesn't change. There is no way of knowing how many read the last page.

Chaptered stories do give a bit of a clue as to how many readers are staying with the story. Generally you will find the Views from chapter three onwards flatten out, although there's often a slight downward trend over the whole story.

 

[SimonDoom]

A "view" occurs every unique time that a story is clicked on and opened up. It is not based on page count. It doesn't mean that the "viewer" has read the story the whole way through.

 

[designatedvictim]

Wow... less than 15 minutes after posting this, I got Unobombed!

 

[designatedvictim]

A "view" occurs every unique time that a story is clicked on and opened up. It is not based on page count. It doesn't mean that the "viewer" has read the story the whole way through.

I was just thinking in terms of linking into the second or third page.

Just wondering.

 

[NotWise]

I don't think there's any way to find the page count without opening the story, which registers a view. So the only way the page count can affect the views is through 2nd and subsequent visits by the same reader.

Views are best regarded as a measure of traffic, and nothing more.

Maybe the one bomb was a coincidence, but it happens often enough when authors mention the success of their story that I see a pattern.

 

[SimonDoom]

I was just thinking in terms of linking into the second or third page.

Just wondering.

I don't know what that means. How do you do that?

I don't know how to link to a page of a story. I open a link to a story and once there I can navigate to a page. The navigation, once inside a story, does not lead to additional view counts.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Wow... less than 15 minutes after posting this, I got Unobombed!

All right, how bad was it? I remember kidding you that you underestimated how well you are doing. Or maybe you overestimated this attack. Your story list doesn't look that different, but I didn't memorize every score that you used to have.

But, yes, views is an extremely fuzzy metric. Anyway, I guess @designatedvictim was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek handle.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I don't know what that means. How do you do that?

I don't know how to link to a page of a story. I open a link to a story and once there I can navigate to a page. The navigation, once inside a story, does not lead to additional view counts.

Do you mean the posted story itself? I don't think you have a choice: it's always going to appear on the lists with the first page as what people will use to open it. If it's chapters, you can have each as a stand-alone sequel with a new name. That's happened to me when I didn't expect that I'd ever write more, but then inspiration hit me. I always tell readers what the previous installment was named.

 

[designatedvictim]

I don't know what that means. How do you do that?

I don't know how to link to a page of a story. I open a link to a story and once there I can navigate to a page. The navigation, once inside a story, does not lead to additional view counts.

All you need to do is add ?page=2 to the first page, or bookmark one of the page links at the bottom of the story.

It doesn't happen by accident, but it can happen.

 

[SimonDoom]

All you need to do is add ?page=2 to the first page, or bookmark one of the page links at the bottom of the story.

It doesn't happen by accident, but it can happen.

You're talking to somebody who doesn't know the lingo. I have NO idea what you are saying.

 

[designatedvictim]

All right, how bad was it? I remember kidding you that you underestimated how well you are doing. Or maybe you overestimated this attack. Your story list doesn't look that different, but I didn't memorize every score that you used to have.

But, yes, views is an extremely fuzzy metric. Anyway, I guess @designatedvictim was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek handle.

It was (so far) a singleton.

It went from 4.6 to 4.46. Now at 29 votes.

Then followed in close order by two 5s, so it's back in Red H territory again.

I never vote on my own stuff, so neither was my doing.

 

[designatedvictim]

You're talking to somebody who doesn't know the lingo. I have NO idea what you are saying.

Yeah, sorry, I deal with URLs all the time.

Story, page one:
https://www.literotica.com/s/a-week-of-sunrises

Story, page two:
https://www.literotica.com/s/a-week-of-sunrises?page=2

Story, page X:
https://www.literotica.com/s/a-week-of-sunrises?page=X

Comments:
Story, page two:
https://www.literotica.com/s/a-week-of-sunrises/comments (no comments, yet, though)

You can literally jump to any page by editing the last number.

The page navigator at the bottom of the page has links to individual pages, upto to a certain limit. In a desktop browser, if you hover your mouse over the link, it ought to display a tool-tip with the link target, usually at the bottom of the browser window - depends on browser used.

 

[SimonDoom]

Yeah, sorry, I deal with URLs all the time.

Story, page one:
https://www.literotica.com/s/a-week-of-sunrises

Story, page two:
https://www.literotica.com/s/a-week-of-sunrises?page=2

Story, page X:
https://www.literotica.com/s/a-week-of-sunrises?page=X

Comments:
Story, page two:
https://www.literotica.com/s/a-week-of-sunrises/comments (no comments, yet, though)

You can literally jump to any page by editing the last number.

The page navigator at the bottom of the page has links to individual pages, upto to a certain limit. In a desktop browser, if you hover your mouse over the link, it ought to display a tool-tip with the link target, usually at the bottom of the browser window - depends on browser used.

I had not considered this because I can't imagine why someone would want to bookmark page 2 of a story.

I don't know how this works. Moving from page 1 to page 2 doesn't create a new view. If you read page 1 of a story and then open a new tab in your browser and open page 2, which has been bookmarked, I don't know what happens. I imagine this is quite rare.

 

[NotWise]

I had not considered this because I can't imagine why someone would want to bookmark page 2 of a story.

I don't know how this works. Moving from page 1 to page 2 doesn't create a new view. If you read page 1 of a story and then open a new tab in your browser and open page 2, which has been bookmarked, I don't know what happens. I imagine this is quite rare.

You would bookmark later pages in a story so you can start reading where you left off. I doubt that a link to a later page would register a view, but it could be tested.

 

[gunhilltrain]

It was (so far) a singleton.

It went from 4.6 to 4.46. Now at 29 votes.

Then followed in close order by two 5s, so it's back in Red H territory again.

I never vote on my own stuff, so neither was my doing.

"Red H's come and go, talking of Michelangelo." If think I've lost a couple over the years, and they usually don't come back. After about two weeks, voting seems to stop. Oddly, people will "favorite" an old story frequently but I've never noticed if they voted.

Hey, Biden, Trump, and the rest of that ilk probably vote for themselves, but it doesn't make a difference of course. That's a guess, because I can't remember any of them mentioning it.

 

[alohadave]

I don't know how to link to a page of a story.

https://www.literotica.com/s/taking-pictures-2?page=2

https://www.literotica.com/s/taking-pictures-2 is the story page which has the first page of the story. ?page=2 is the page number of each page past the first.

 

[Bamagan]

When I tested that last year, direct links to later pages did not appear to increment the counter for the story. I used a couple of mine that get very low traffic, one a standalone and one a late chapter in a series. I believe views are based only on opening the first page. Bookmarking or otherwise returning to the first page multiple times in order to finish a story does appear to count as multiple views (at least, it does when the browser has been closed, and probably any situation that is considered a new session).

 

[BobbyBrandt]

All you need to do is add ?page=2 to the first page, or bookmark one of the page links at the bottom of the story.

It doesn't happen by accident, but it can happen.

I do this very thing frequently on a longer story to bookmark where I am when I go back to it. I never considered whether re-entering a story in this way might affect the view count. Someone will test this, I'm sure.

 

[MillieDynamite]

The page count is based on the IP location that opens the page. Once it's been opened by one person, no matter how many times they view it (using the same IP) there isn't a new view added.

 

[SimonDoom]

The page count is based on the IP location that opens the page. Once it's been opened by one person, no matter how many times they view it (using the same IP) there isn't a new view added.

How do you know this? My impression, although I am not certain, is the opposite: I think when one reader reopens a story he has already read that it registers as a new view.

One reason I believe this is that I've noticed that over time with high-view count stories the view to vote ratio gradually increases, which suggests to me that people may be re-reading the story but obviously not re-voting on the story, because you can't do that.

 

[alohadave]

My impression, although I am not certain, is the opposite: I think when one reader reopens a story he has already read that it registers as a new view.

I just tested this again the other day. It takes a while for the count to increase, but it does count each page load as a view.

 

[SimonDoom]

I just tested this again the other day. It takes a while for the count to increase, but it does count each page load as a view.

To clarify that: what do you mean specifically by "page load"? If I'm on page 1 of a story and I click to go to page 2, that's not a page load is it?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I just tested this again the other day. It takes a while for the count to increase, but it does count each page load as a view.

It used to be instantaneous, and so it was easy to test. Every test you do now would be unreliable due to hours-long update time. You never know who might have accessed the story during those hours.
But yeah, I doubt they actually changed the way views are registered, as the current mechanism "promotes" traffic.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

To clarify that: what do you mean specifically by "page load"? If I'm on page 1 of a story and I click to go to page 2, that's not a page load is it?

It wasn't the case before when the story view count was getting instantly updated. I doubt anything changed in that regard even though it can't be tasted anymore.