What does the view counter count?

[Serafina1210]

If you were designing it from scratch and wanted to know how many people read to the end of a piece, as opposed to sampling a sentence and moving on, you'd probably count views on the last page of a story and detect bounces--viewers who stay only a few seconds and move on.

But who knows what the site actually does? I glanced at the page source, but the scripting there is pretty hard to interpret.

Does anyone have any idea how it works?

 

[allamagione]

Some readers will go straight to the last page for the comments.

I've always thought "views" were the same thing as "hits": the number of people who clicked on the link. Pretty meaningless to me as a writer.

 

[lovecraft68]

Some readers will go straight to the last page for the comments.

I've always thought "views" were the same thing as "hits": the number of people who clicked on the link. Pretty meaningless to me as a writer.

I agree with you they are meaningless.

Sometimes an author will post here or on their homepage "such and such just hit 1 million views!" or my stories have compiled "x views"

Seriously, so?

Now when you see a story with 5000 votes or 200+ comments now that is where I say "wow, that's pretty good" because at least you know people are behind those votes and remarks.

Well of course for the guy who run around here padding his stats daily.

 

[RejectReality]

Nobody knows what the views are. They're probably just hits filtered to some extent.

There's certainly no way to extrapolate actual readers vs. people that read a paragraph and close it, web spiders, or anything else.

About all you can do is look at the vote to view ratio. If a lot of people are voting in relation to the number of views you have, that's a good sign.

"A Lot" on Lit is anything 1% and over *laugh*

My latest is running about 4.21%, and my best is a little over 5%. Both of those are in Sci-Fi&Fantasy.

That's another thing about the vote to view ratio. Some categories have higher readership engagement, so you can't even compare that across categories.

 

[PayDay]

If you were designing it from scratch and wanted to know how many people read to the end of a piece, as opposed to sampling a sentence and moving on, you'd probably count views on the last page of a story and detect bounces--viewers who stay only a few seconds and move on.

But who knows what the site actually does? I glanced at the page source, but the scripting there is pretty hard to interpret.

Does anyone have any idea how it works?

Takes a little bit, and some testing to figure out, but it is functional:

The views listed at the bottom of the story, in grey, by where the number of individuals who favorited your story are the accurate views.

The views in the Author's control panel are individual views plus first page views and search engine bot views.

One page stories illustrate this.

Viewing the complete story (all pages) ticks the grey views at the bottom of the story up by one, and the Author's Control Panel views up by at least one.

Viewing the first page ticks the Author's Control Panel views up by at least one and does not modify the grey views at the bottom of the story unless it's one page.

 

[Serafina1210]

Here's why I was wondering. On July 3 I posted a chapter of my current series with a warning up top that it mostly repeated a story I'd posted earlier and a suggestion that readers who had read that piece might want to skip it and come back for the next installment.

The view count for that chapter was way lower than for any other, and much lower than for other stories posted in the category and on the same day (though I generally do pretty well in comparison to my peers).

So I theorized that 1.) The July 4th weekend brought down views across the board, or 2.) Thousands of readers decided on the same day not to go on with my series, or 3.) The site was somehow compensating for bounces and not counting readers who said "I've read this" and moved on.

Though of course there's always the possibility that 4.) it doesn't mean a thing.

 

[PayDay]

Here's why I was wondering. On July 3 I posted a chapter of my current series with a warning up top that it mostly repeated a story I'd posted earlier and a suggestion that readers who had read that piece might want to skip it and come back for the next installment.

The view count for that chapter was way lower than for any other, and much lower than for other stories posted in the category and on the same day (though I generally do pretty well in comparison to my peers).

So I theorized that 1.) The July 4th weekend brought down views across the board, or 2.) Thousands of readers decided on the same day not to go on with my series, or 3.) The site was somehow compensating for bounces and not counting readers who said "I've read this" and moved on.

Though of course there's always the possibility that 4.) it doesn't mean a thing.

Which view count? They grey at the bottom of the story or the Author's Control panel?

 

[RejectReality]

It was most likely the July 4th weekend. The lion's share of visitors to Lit are from the U.S.

Payday, the view count at the bottom of the story only updates once per day. The view counts on your member page update about every fifteen minutes.

Here's why I was wondering. On July 3 I posted a chapter of my current series with a warning up top that it mostly repeated a story I'd posted earlier and a suggestion that readers who had read that piece might want to skip it and come back for the next installment.

The view count for that chapter was way lower than for any other, and much lower than for other stories posted in the category and on the same day (though I generally do pretty well in comparison to my peers).

So I theorized that 1.) The July 4th weekend brought down views across the board, or 2.) Thousands of readers decided on the same day not to go on with my series, or 3.) The site was somehow compensating for bounces and not counting readers who said "I've read this" and moved on.

Though of course there's always the possibility that 4.) it doesn't mean a thing.

 

[Serafina1210]

Takes a little bit, and some testing to figure out, but it is functional:

The views listed at the bottom of the story, in grey, by where the number of individuals who favorited your story are the accurate views.

The views in the Author's control panel are individual views plus first page views and search engine bot views.

One page stories illustrate this.

Viewing the complete story (all pages) ticks the grey views at the bottom of the story up by one, and the Author's Control Panel views up by at least one.

Viewing the first page ticks the Author's Control Panel views up by at least one and does not modify the grey views at the bottom of the story unless it's one page.

Interesting, but I'm not sure I'm persuaded. If I go back to my first chapter (posted May 14), the count on the author's page is 16,373, but the count at the bottom of the page is 16,305 (it was 16,334, but went down when I refreshed the page--figure THAT out!).

Now I completely believe that my writing is hugely compelling, but I find it hard to believe that, of 16,373 readers (bots, whatever) who viewed the first page, only 68, or less than half of one percent, failed to get to page two.

I have one one-page story, and there the counts are also different--though only by only two.

(I've been talking about the view counts on the member's page, not at the bottom of the story.)

 

[Serafina1210]

It was most likely the July 4th weekend. The lion's share of visitors to Lit are from the U.S.

Payday, the view count at the bottom of the story only updates once per day. The view counts on your member page update about every fifteen minutes.

U.S. people with a life are doing other things. I, on the other hand, am poring over my Literotica stats.

You can see that the view count is hard-coded into the story's pages. I suppose it would be an expensive thing to regenerate all the story pages many times a day.

 

[RejectReality]

It's not actually hardcoded. That code is generated by PHP. You can tell that when a new favorite pops up, because it soon registers, and the name appears in the source code.

I did just discover something, though. I was looking through some old stories and the view counts were within 10 between my author page and the listing at the bottom of the stories.

Then I hit one of my oldest stories and ran across an anomaly. My author's page showed 194805, but the bottom of the story only had 100793. That's a pretty wide gap. Refreshing didn't change it.

Checked a couple more, then came back to that story. Now it's registering a number at the bottom of the page that's within 10, just like everything else.

It's probably yet another of the hiccups that happens because of the cache wall most of Lit is behind.

Regardless, there's absolutely nothing you can learn by comparing the number at the bottom of the story to your author's page listing. They simply update on a different schedule.

 

[Serafina1210]

It's not actually hardcoded. That code is generated by PHP. You can tell that when a new favorite pops up, because it soon registers, and the name appears in the source code.

Of course. Stupid me.

Regardless, there's absolutely nothing you can learn by comparing the number at the bottom of the story to your author's page listing. They simply update on a different schedule.

Makes sense. Thanks!

 

[PayDay]

It was most likely the July 4th weekend. The lion's share of visitors to Lit are from the U.S.

Payday, the view count at the bottom of the story only updates once per day. The view counts on your member page update about every fifteen minutes.

Indeed.

Most of my stories have massive differences between views in the ACP and at the bottom of the stories, more than a couple hundred.

 

[RejectReality]

Indeed.

Most of my stories have massive differences between views in the ACP and at the bottom of the stories, more than a couple hundred.

Check them again. I had one that was off by almost 90k. After checking a couple of other stories and coming back to it, it was within 10. Odds are you'll see the same phenomenon.

 

[PayDay]

Check them again. I had one that was off by almost 90k. After checking a couple of other stories and coming back to it, it was within 10. Odds are you'll see the same phenomenon.

Already did a while back, no dice.

It's with the multipart stories that are 4+ pages.

 

[RejectReality]

Danica Ch. 01 ( 6 pages ) Story=62036 Author=62036 ( Sci Fi )
Danica Epilogue ( 5 pages ) Story=60440 Author=60443 ( Sci Fi )
Friend of the Wood ( 5 pages ) Story=18639 Author=18654 ( Sci Fi )
It Cuts Both Ways ( 6 pages ) Story =121005 Author=121018 ( LW )
No Purer Love ( 7 pages ) Story=120187 Author=120187 ( Incest )

Three from a low read category, two from the highest read categories on the site, all with 5 or more pages, and the maximum difference between the number at the bottom of the story and the number on my author's page is 15.

If your theory is correct, damn near everybody who opens anything I write is making it to the end.

I highly doubt that.

For one thing, I open only the first page of every single one of them four times a year when I do my quarterly track of my numbers.

 

[PayDay]

Danica Ch. 01 ( 6 pages ) Story=62036 Author=62036 ( Sci Fi )
Danica Epilogue ( 5 pages ) Story=60440 Author=60443 ( Sci Fi )
Friend of the Wood ( 5 pages ) Story=18639 Author=18654 ( Sci Fi )
It Cuts Both Ways ( 6 pages ) Story =121005 Author=121018 ( LW )
No Purer Love ( 7 pages ) Story=120187 Author=120187 ( Incest )

Three from a low read category, two from the highest read categories on the site, all with 5 or more pages, and the maximum difference between the number at the bottom of the story and the number on my author's page is 15.

If your theory is correct, damn near everybody who opens anything I write is making it to the end.

I highly doubt that.

For one thing, I open only the first page of every single one of them four times a year when I do my quarterly track of my numbers.

Maybe you're a far more readable writer than I am

I dunno about everybody, but I open up all parts to a story from the New section in tabs before I read it. After I scan the new list I go back and read offline. So there's that.