https://blog.archive.org/2018/12/19/new-views-stats-for-the-new-year/
("The new system" is referring to Archive's system, not ours.)
That is all the "download count" stats we have.What counts as a view in the new system
- Each media item in the archive has a views counter.
- The view counter is increased by 1 when a user engages with the media file(s) in an item.
- Media engagement includes experiencing the media through the player in the item page (pressing play on a video or audio player, flipping pages in the online bookreader, emulating software, etc.), downloading files, streaming files, or borrowing a book.
- All types of engagements are treated in the same way – they are all views.
- A single user can only increase the view count of a particular item once per day.
- A user may view multiple media files in a single item, or view the same media file in a single item multiple times, but within one day that engagement will only count as 1 view.
Other points from that blog below. I've bolded the ones more pertinent to us:
- The legacy system updated item views once per day and collection views once per month. The new system will update both item and collection views once per day.
- The legacy system updated item views ~24 hours after a view was recorded. The new system will update the views count ~4 days after the view was recorded. This time delay in the new system will decrease to ~24 hours at some point in the future.
- The legacy system had no information about geographic location of users. The new system has approximate geolocation for every view. This geographic information is based on obfuscated IP addresses. It is accurate at a general level, but does not represent an individual user’s specific location.
- The legacy system had no information about how many views were caused by robots crawling the site. The new system shows us how well the site is crawled by breaking out media access by robots (vs. interactions from people).
- The legacy system did not count all book reader interactions as views. The new system counts bookreader engagements as a view after 2 interactions (like page flips).
- On audio and video items, the legacy system sometimes counted views when users saw *any* media in the item (like thumbnail images). The new system only counts engagements with the audio or video media files in an item in those media types, respectively.
