Removing the "visit counter" for threads (?)

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on May 29, 2021, 8:27 am

Hi Lucio,

I was thinking of the 2 points:

• I was wondering if it is possible that people click twice on your email newsletter.
  Personally, I think it's unlikely.
• Would Mailchimp be more accurate than the forum count?

My personal opinion is that Mailchimp is more accurate.

Here's a possible guess of why this is so.
Though I think your counter probably tracks IP addresses.

AD & SCRIPT BLOCKERS

I'm not exactly sure how this website counter works.
I am using the Brave browser which automatically blocks any trackers on websites.
Hence, when I click on your newsletter, the count is registered on Mailchimp but not the website.

MULTIPLE PEOPLE FROM THE SAME EXTERNAL IP ADDRESS

This applies if your counter uses IP addreses to determine the number of visitors.
I am aware that Internet Service Providers (ISP) are grouping Internet Protocol (IP) addresses together to form an internal network.
This internal network would interface with the external Internet with an external public IP address.
This has been sparked due to the shortage of available public IP4 addresses.

If this is the case, the tracker gives an inaccurate picture of how many users visit the website.
Though it may give some idea of how geographically diverse the visitors are.
However, the lack of granularity would probably mean it's not very helpful.

Google Analytics probably uses more advanced tracking so it's more accurate.
I don't have enough knowledge to confirm this.

More in these articles:
Is It Possible for Different People to Have the Same Public IP Address?
How Accurate Are Website Traffic Trackers?

My gut feeling told me this, and I did some quick research to check.
So I may be biased and be wrong on this.

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on May 29, 2021, 8:11 pm

Yes, MailChimp differentiates between multiple clicks and unique clicks (you can see it in the screenshot).

Still quite a big difference.

Not a huge issue, but good to know if someone is using the number of views on a thread to judge whether or not people find the topic/title interesting enough to click on it.

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on May 30, 2021, 7:20 am

I totally missed the 2 different arrows that you included in the screenshot.

I personally don't use the number of views when viewing new threads. I tend to use the titles a lot more. I like to use the search function too.

That being said, I have found the relative number of views on threads to be an interesting indicator of what content would be more popular. Although I have seldom or maybe never used these numbers to make a decision on what to post.

Every time you share these metrics, I realise there are more people on the forum than I think. It's like in the hundreds if not thousands. Maybe because not everyone posts on the forum.

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on May 30, 2021, 11:46 am

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on May 30, 2021, 7:20 am

That being said, I have found the relative number of views on threads to be an interesting indicator of what content would be more popular. Although I have seldom or maybe never used these numbers to make a decision on what to post.

Every time you share these metrics, I realise there are more people on the forum than I think. It's like in the hundreds if not thousands. Maybe because not everyone posts on the forum.

Absolutely, it's an important indicator of what people are more interested on.

Albeit imprecise and likely underestimating, it's probably still a good tool as a comparison among different threads.
For TPM, it can also provide great ideas on what to write about next -albeit I've never used that to decide what to write about so far-.

And about readers/participants split, absolutely, the writers are a smaller percentage.