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Archive Warning:
Category:
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Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2018-02-25
Words:
963
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
106
Kudos:
1,281
Bookmarks:
48
Hits:
48,638

What is a hit?

Summary:

An explanation of how AO3 counts hits to a work.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Updated based on this article published on 2020-04-19 20:12:14 -0400

 

According to AO3′s FAQ:

 

Hits are a counter of how many times a work has been accessed. A hit is registered every time a visitor navigates to a work’s page, with the following exceptions:

  • If two visits in a row come from the same IP address, only the first one is registered.
  • Moving between chapters in a work will only register one hit in total, not one hit per chapter.
  • If you’re logged in, hits are not counted when you visit your own works.

Note that hits only log the number of visits to a work, not the duration of the visit. The number of Hits in the Totals box on your Statistics page (refer to Where do I find Statistics? for instructions) is the total number of hits all your works have received.

Hold up.

Read that first bullet point again. 

 

If two visits in a row come from the same IP address, only the first one is registered.

What does this mean exactly? Here’s an example from AO3:

 

So if you visit a work, then leave the page and view it again (from the same device and internet connection) the following week, and no other user has visited it in the meantime, your second visit would not register as a new hit.

However, if I had visited the work after your first visit but before your second, then your second visit would count as a new hit.

Here is another example. Pretend that your AO3 fandom consists of only three people: You, your friend, and an author. The author posts a fic and never looks at it again. Being the loyal fanfic followers you are, you and your friend both strive to read the fic.

Scenario A: You open the fic first. Your friend is busy with real life and does not open the fic until the next day. You take your time and read the fic over the course of the day, refreshing the fic four times (from the same device and internet connection so that your IP address is the same).

Since you are the sole reader that day, even though you visited the fic five times (your first visit was when you first opened the fic + four times you refreshed), AO3 registers that all five consecutive visits were from the same IP address and therefore does not count the four times you refreshed the page as hits.

Visits: 5   |   Readers: 1   |   Hits: 1

You finish the fic today and close out of it. The next day, your friend opens the fic and begins reading. The first time they open the fic (visit 6 of the fic), AO3 registers that the IP address is different from the previous visit. The hits counter ticks up by one.

Visits: 6   |   Readers: 2   |   Hits: 2

Your friend also takes their time and refreshes the fic four times over the course of the day. Since they are the only reader that day, at the end of the day, the score is:

Visits: 10   |   Readers: 2   |   Hits: 2

Scenario B: You and your friend both open the fic on the same day. You open it first, and then they do. If each of you refresh the fic four time with you refreshing first, and interleaving both of your refreshes, at the end of the day, AO3 would have recorded thus:

Visits: 10   |   Readers: 2   |   Hits: 10

Visits: 10   |   Readers: 2   |   Hits: 2

 

This is due to the change in how the hits counter works according to the article linked at the top of the page:

Previously, a work's hit count only increased if:

  • you were not logged in as one of the work's creators, and
  • you visited a single-chapter work, a multi-chapter work in entire work mode, or the first chapter of a multi-chapter work in chapter-by-chapter mode, and
  • your IP address did not match that of the visitor right before you.

This meant hits weren't counted if you followed a direct link to a later chapter, e.g. from a subscription email, or if you were a work's sole dedicated follower who returned to it day after day.

The revised code will increase the work's hit count if:

  • you are not logged in as one of the work's creators, and
  • you visit a single-chapter work, a multi-chapter work in entire work mode, or any chapter of a multi-chapter work in chapter-by-chapter mode, and
  • your IP address has not visited the work in the last 24 hours.

This means a work's hit count will still only increase by one regardless of whether you visit one chapter or fifty, but it will no longer matter if you start on the first chapter or the tenth, or if someone else accessed the work between your daily visits.

 

I believe that the 24 hour time limit also makes clear what happens in the following scenario:

Scenario C:

You visit the fic on day 1 and refresh it once.

Visits: 2   |   Readers: 1   |   Hits: 1

You close out of the fic and visit it again one week later to reread it.

Visits: 2   |   Readers: 1   |   Hits: 2

 

There are multiple variations on these scenarios but hopefully these three are enough to illustrate how the hit counter on AO3 works. AO3 has their reasons for coding the hit counter the way they do (mostly to do with privacy and storage of information issues), but that’s a hit, and that’s why hits should only be used to make a rough estimate of the number of readers — and why you shouldn’t put too much stock in the kudos/hits ratio (particularly for multichapter fics). 

Notes:

This work is part of LLF Comment Project, whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:

  • Short comments
  • Long comments
  • Questions and clarification requests
  • Corrections

While this is a study as opposed to a story, we greatly value all feedback and support. We will reply to all comments as time allows, prioritizing corrections and questions.