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wpForo 1.x.x [Closed] Counting non-registered visitors so all views count

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Posts: 24
Topic starter
(@davidborrink)
Eminent Member
Joined: 6 years ago

We have been following a couple threads here to try and get our view numbers to match what we're seeing on Google Analytics and on the Topic pages. 

Here are those threads:

https://wpforo.com/community/general-discussions/counting-non-registered-visitors-in-the-forum-viewcount-and-online-count/#post-13189

and these two: https://wpforo.com/community/how-to-and-troubleshooting-2/very-misleading-view-count-not-accurate/#post-43267

and https://wpforo.com/community/postid/29050/

 

We have cleared all caches on the forum dashboard, turned off all caching choices in the features tab in the settings area of the dashboard, and added the filter code recommended for version 1.7.8 and above since we have 1.8.4 running. But the numbers are not changing like we think they should.

For example: today we have a topic that is getting a lot of traffic. Hundreds of visitors. The topics registered at 37 views for a bit, then we did the above steps and it went to 39. On the Main Forum page where you see the subforms, this area has messages like "15 people viewing", but if you go to the topic they would be going to, we still have 39 views listed, this number should be shooting up, like to 54 at the moment if "15 people viewing", and there have been hundreds coming over to see it. Our number of views should be 400-500 by our estimations. We followed all the instructions in the above posts, is there something else we haven't done? 

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5 Replies
Posts: 24
Topic starter
(@davidborrink)
Eminent Member
Joined: 6 years ago

I read another suggested topic related to this and the user also has analytics telling him he's had over 100 visitors but it registers as 20. It would be nice to have truth in number reporting. Look at this forum we are in. I see that this forum post (here) has 130 views as of the moment I'm writing this. I trust that means that 130 people have looked at my question, not 500 or more. If 130 actual different people have looked at this forum post, then why can't I get accurate numbers like that on my site?

Posts: 986
Moderator
(@martin)
Support Team
Joined: 8 years ago
Posts: 24
Topic starter
(@davidborrink)
Eminent Member
Joined: 6 years ago

Hi Martin,

Thank you for taking the time to respond. If you look at my original post, you'll see I am already referring to the posts you have mentioned. You'll see a description of all the steps I took, which describe the steps you pointed out. So I have taken those steps, but we're not getting numbers that reflect what our analytics tell us should be higher numbers. It seems that a visit should be a counted as a visit, whether someone has visited before or not. It shouldn't be by IP address as one of the other moderators stated on one of those posts from that topic.

Take a look at the attached shot of our Forum topic, and also of our Google Search Console stats. Google states that we've had over 1,000 click-throughs on this topic just from Google search results which means these are unique views. Our forum topic should show this 1,000+ number PLUS all the clicks counted from people clicking through from WITHIN our site as well. That 303 is not an accurate number at all.

I have done all the suggestions in the first couple posts I referred to in my initial post, but your method of counting views is not true to what happens. How can this be fixed? 

 

Posts: 986
Moderator
(@martin)
Support Team
Joined: 8 years ago

Hi @davidborrink,

Please be as short as possible. All works correctly and please never compare Google data with your forum. Google counts all clicks, but wpForo does a smart and unique counting. 

Even if you disable all filtering options using the instruction in the mentioned post will not change the count. Only new clicks will be counted without filters. So you need to wait to see changes.

Another step is the cache. The count views are cached and you should delete wpForo cache in Dashboard > Forums > Dashboard admin page to see current views.

There is nothing I can add here. Forums are not view statistic counters. Forums are designed to control user and IP unique views in topics so comparing it with Google is not a good idea and you'll never get the same number for sure.

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