Hello Folks! Vanilla Support is back at it again with theā¦š„drumrollš„ pleaseā¦
Page views data is always a hot topic in our analytics related inquiries. I wanted to give a brief overview from my experience on how Vanilla goes about tracking and reporting on page views. This is a KPI for client reporting, so it will always be nice to know a bit more about the topic. Stay tuned!
NOTE: āļøĀ Page views should not be tracked or referenced via our GET /discussions API as the views count there are no longer accurate. Using our Analytics charts or Analytics API will get you the most accurate page view data you need to get your questions answered. You can view the heaps o' knowledge shared by support team leadĀ @Branwyn TĀ on Analytics + APIĀ HERE.
Each Vanilla data source is unique. They all have some relatable group by and filtering options, but you will find depending on the data source you choose, there are also data source specific selections when making your custom charts.
Where are page views pulled from in Analytics?
First off, you may be askingā¦ Where is my data coming from anyways?
Vanilla community data is stored in your own unique Keen instance. Keen captures events in time. We do not retroactively delete Keen data. This means that if someone visits a page, and then deletes their account. Their page view records will still be stored if they fall in the date range you select. Our analytics chars are built on top of API calls which index your Keen data and pull only the qualified data from your unique Keen instance.
Intro to Page View Types w/ basic examples
What is a page view?
A page view is counted as any page that serves an HTTP response with a status code of 200. (page has been correctly delivered).
The current available page view events are considered 'types', we can see these types by making a chart and adding the 'Page View Type' field to our filters section.
While most of these are pretty self explanatory based on their value name, I wanted to expand on a few of the stand out values. See below.
š£ To learn more about how to filter and group your page view analytics, visit HERE.
page_view
A page_view event adds count when users visits any page. Adding one (1) count towards the specificĀ URL & by URLĀ page view count in your analytics. This is helpful when you attempt to report on landing pages, or pages that do not host any specific posted content within. This could be your community or a knowledgebase home page, a nested category page, or any other Vanilla native web page. Visiting a unique discussion or article will also include count toward their specificĀ URL & by URL, with the addition of adding a count to the content specificĀ ID, NameĀ analytics. Each of these is then able to be filtered or grouped by in analytics charts or through our analytics query API.
The filter option by a specific category or subcommunity on our Analytics dashboard is a great feature. The page view counts you see there will be the total of all content apart of the top level category you filter by. If a category has no content and is a landing page, no page views will be tracked for that page unless pulled via custom chart with aĀ URL or by URL filter applied.Ā We track page views per-discussion (and you can filter by the category of the discussion). Learn more about our Analytics best practicesĀ here.
Example (From my test site): I want to see how many page views my basic registration page has by using URL path
discussion_view
Each discussionID or discussion name stores its own count of page views using the discussion_view event. If you group by or filter by discussion name, and there have been changes due to a typo for example, the page views will begin flowing to the new discussion name. We recommend you use discussionID to filter for most optimal counts. When the discussion_view event fires off, one (1) count is added to this total. Every discussion is then typically housed within a specific parent category. You can consider this parent category it's home. The discussions total page views will be added into the total count of the categories page view total.
This means that category view counts are essentially the total amount of housed discussionID views added together. Which creates a total sum of page views for the entire category.
We do not currently support tracking page views on comments unless a user visits the direct URL related to the comment. So a user visit to a discussion will not add any specific count for comments and vice versa. You can filter comments URL or by URL to pull the comment specific page view metrics if that is something actively being used in your community.
For example, I can create a new table chart with a simple setup:
Group By: User Role Type
Filter by: Page View Type equal to discussion_view
I can then get even more granular if I am interested in seeing the specific area of the site these views went to by adjusting my group by option to "Category Name".
Group By: Category Name
Filter By: Page View Type equal to discussion_view
THE END
For more info on page view analytics that may return 'other', please check outĀ this articleĀ in our Knowledge Base.
Interested in finding out what page views may be from bots? We got you covered! Check out this article.
Hopefully you caught all of that š
Based on your chart setting and filters in place, if you are noticing page view discrepancies and are curious to find out more as to why you see what you see, please reach out toĀ support@vanillaforums.com
If you have any questions or would like further thoughts, please do comment on this post and we are happy to advise further.
