My Discourse is open only to active patrons of my Patreon site. In looking at metrics in the consolidate pageviews section I see that a good number of views are listed as from anonymous users and a few crawlers. Is there a way I can confirm these anonymous users are indeed supposed to have access? Is there a way I as admin can see who these users are? And what are crawlers doing on a closed forum? Thanks for any insights.

A web crawler is an internet bot which systematically browses the worldwide web typically for the purpose of web indexing web. search engines and some other sites use web crawling or spidering. (Not to confuse with that creature). You can just log out of your account, which will turn you into an anonymous user with no account, and check if you have access or not.

Thanks! I logged out and when I go to my page I see only the option to log in or create an account. But I’m curious that, if that’s the case, I regularly have 20+ anonymous users a day. It’s concerning since many of my users expose very personal and sometimes traumatic info and are specifically looking for a truly safe space to get and offer support.

Anonymous users can only see your login page, but that’s still going to be in the activity dashboard since they are still visiting your site, but they cannot see what’s inside unless they create an account.

Whew! Thank you so much for that explanation!

Understanding anonymous metrics on a login required site

Community Building Data & reporting

codinghorror (Jeff Atwood) February 6, 2019, 12:27am 3

The crawlers can still see your login page. Check your admin dashboard for the web crawler reports to see if badly behaved crawlers are hitting you. There are .. a lot.

Topic		Replies	Views
Consolidated pageviews: Logged in users vs Anonymous in a "private" community Data & reporting	1	862	December 29, 2019
Anonymous users appearing in pageview stats on invite only site Data & reporting	2	493	August 27, 2020
Consolidated Pageviews accuracy Data & reporting	19	2546	August 25, 2019
What are anonymous users exactly Data & reporting	1	344	July 11, 2024
Anonymous Users When 'Login Required' checked Product Support	1	568	March 5, 2021

Understanding anonymous metrics on a login required site

Related topics