Mismatch in Admin Dashboard and Data Explorer Query Views
Bathinda noted a discrepancy between the number of views shown in the Admin Dashboard (719) and a Data Explorer query (61). The query only records the first visit of a user to a topic, whether logged in or anonymous, making it incomparable to the dashboard’s Consolidated Pageviews metrics.
Bathinda understood that the dashboard counts each page change as a view, whereas the query only counts the initial topic visit. For example, if a user visits a topic and reads 10 posts, and an anonymous user reads 15 posts under the same topic, the dashboard will count 25 page views, while the query will show only 2 topic views.
JammyDodger and [/t/-/309441/4] confirmed that the topic_views table records the first visit of a user to a topic, and subsequent visits are not counted. The two reports are based on different data, making them incomparable.
The number of total views for today 26/5/2024 (excluding crawlers) in the Admin Dashboard are 719
But a Data Explorer query which tracks all topics views separately, topic wise, shows total views to be equal to merely- 61
How’s this possible? Does data query only records views by logged in users only?
Query:
And if this query records even non-logged-in users also, then why is there a huge diff of 90% of number of user visits?
The topic_views table only records the first visit of a user to a topic (by user_id for logged in or by ip address for anon), so I’m afraid it is not comparable to the dashboard Consolidated Pageviews metrics.
So, if a single topic is visited by a logged in user and reads 10 posts under that single topic and another anonymous user comes and reads 15 posts under the same topic..
Then Dashboard> Page views will count it as 25, while the Data Explorer Query will show only 2 views of that topic.
Hope I’ve understood and explained it correctly.
No - the topic_views table will record the very first time someone visits a topic. If they visit on 1st Jan and then revisit eg later that day or every day for 10 years there will only ever be one record of their very first visit.
Also, the pageviews are not counting each viewing of a post or just views of topics. They increase each time a page is changed (eg. Going into a topic or from topic → Latest, etc)
The two reports are based on different data.
