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Active user count may not be accurate

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URL: https://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=30755
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Topic: Active user count may not be accurate

Posted By: Albert
Subject: Active user count may not be accurate
Date Posted: 18 May 2013 at 10:51pm

I'm not sure the active user count is 100% accurate, although not a big deal. For example, throughout the day, my active users displayed shows an average of 30 - 40 users (including guests), but I have a thread that's darn near gone viral that's getting 700 - 1000 views a day.

Here is thread

http://www.avianflutalk.com/urgent-ny-25-sars-cases-4-unknown-flu-cases-7_topic29498. - http://www.avianflutalk.com/urgent-ny-25-sars-cases-4-unknown-flu-cases-7_topic29498.html

Again, hardly no users online, and this thread is getting nearly 1000 views a day. The only thing I can gather is that the user count could be off, but not sure.

Replies:

Posted By: Scotty32
Date Posted: 19 May 2013 at 9:39pm

The active users count is not really accurate because it is near impossible to detect active users due to the way the Internet works.

Because somebody could be reading a thread or closed the browser, the website does not know the difference, it will class people as "active" for 20 mins. And on each page refresh update the last active time.

If you mean the forum "view count" for threads, this is not accurate either, as it just adds a count every time there is a page load. So when you start a thread it will get 1 page view straight away. Somebody comes in reads it +1. They post, +1 and so on. When you get multiple pages, when somebody looks through the pages it is +1 for each page and then if they post, another +1 on return. etc.
You also have the search engines that load the page, another +1. 700-1000 is a lot, without a doubt, but the forum stats are not perfect.

If the thread views are from an independent stats program like Google Analytics then they may be more accurate, if not, it may be worth looking at setting one up for a better understanding.

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