XenForo's current view counts include requests from bots/crawlers and do not suppress repeated requests from the same visitor. This means view_count can be significantly higher than the number of genuine human page views.
It would be useful if XenForo had a common concept of a qualified view that could be applied to thread views and, where appropriate, other content view counters such as pages, resources, media and articles.
We've recently been looking at this in some detail on AVForums because we also maintain our own view counter for editorial content.
Our editorial view counter works differently from XenForo's thread counter:
For one recent review and its associated discussion thread, over comparable periods, we found:
A XenForo qualified view could:
This would provide forum owners with a more meaningful measure of human readership, without attempting to turn the view counter into a full analytics system.
It should also make the figure more useful commercially. A qualified human view count would provide a better basis for estimating advertising opportunity and potential revenue than a raw view count that includes crawler traffic and repeated requests.
It would not, of course, represent actual ad impressions or revenue - factors such as consent, ad blocking, fill rate, viewability and the number of advertising placements still need to be considered - but it would provide a much more useful starting point for understanding the monetisable audience of XenForo content.
It would be useful if XenForo had a common concept of a qualified view that could be applied to thread views and, where appropriate, other content view counters such as pages, resources, media and articles.
We've recently been looking at this in some detail on AVForums because we also maintain our own view counter for editorial content.
Our editorial view counter works differently from XenForo's thread counter:
- Known bots/crawlers are excluded based on the user agent.
- Repeated requests for the same content are suppressed within a 30-second window.
- For logged-in users this is based on user ID/content ID/timestamp, while guests use a hash of the IP address.
- Once the 30-second period has elapsed, a subsequent visit can count as another view.
For one recent review and its associated discussion thread, over comparable periods, we found:
- Editorial review: native counter 2,191 views versus 2,395 GA4 views.
- Discussion thread: XenForo counter 3,301 views versus approximately 2,390 GA4 views.
A XenForo qualified view could:
- Exclude requests identified as robots using XenForo's existing robot detection, with the possibility for add-ons to extend the robot definitions.
- Suppress repeated views by the same visitor for a configurable period - for example, 30 seconds.
- Identify logged-in visitors by user ID and guests using a suitable privacy-conscious identifier.
- Exclude requests identified as browser prefetch/prerender requests where the content has not actually been viewed.
- Allow genuine repeat visits after the configured suppression period to count again.
This would provide forum owners with a more meaningful measure of human readership, without attempting to turn the view counter into a full analytics system.
It should also make the figure more useful commercially. A qualified human view count would provide a better basis for estimating advertising opportunity and potential revenue than a raw view count that includes crawler traffic and repeated requests.
It would not, of course, represent actual ad impressions or revenue - factors such as consent, ad blocking, fill rate, viewability and the number of advertising placements still need to be considered - but it would provide a much more useful starting point for understanding the monetisable audience of XenForo content.
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