When measuring a site’s traffic in WordPress, users often ask, does WordPress count your own views? We have two options to consider.

As WordPress considers two platforms, WordPress.com, and the open-source WordPress.org, the answer may yield different stats for the two platforms.

In this article, we’re going to explore WordPress page views. Specifically, we will explore more details on whether or not WordPress counts your views.

Does WordPress count your own Page Views?

Most users use the free option – WordPress.com to create a WordPress site. Also, some people prefer to use a self-hosted WordPress website – by using WordPress.org’s open-source platform.

Page views on WordPress.com sites

Counting users’ page views highly depends on the type of platform used for a WordPress site.

Let’s describe the matter in more detail.

For example, according to the official resource of WordPress.com, which represents the company that provides hosting for WordPress users and a free option to create a WordPress site, WordPress.com is used to count users’ page views for internal users, such as admins or logged in users. However, WordPress.com has changed its default settings for site owners and is no longer counting page views for logged-in users.

We tested WordPress.com’s page view hits with a test site. Unlike its past behavior, WordPress.com now doesn’t count your page views while logged into your dashboard.

Here, you need to consider the aspect of counts for users who own their sites and the ones who visit an external site built on WordPress.com.

Users who run their sites on WordPress.com can see people’s counts in the dashboard. On the other hand, the platform has stopped counting their personal views if they visit their pages. On WordPress.com’s free sites, admins cannot see their view counts if they visit their pages while logged in to their WordPress free sites’ dashboards. However, if logged-in admins visit their pages from a different web browser, WordPress will count their views in this case.

Here, the case is different for external sites. If logged-in admins visit other sites while logged in to their WordPress.com dashboards, their visits to external sites will count their page views for other sites’ owners.

While WordPress.com may help site owners manage the said option in Settings, it allows admins to track personal site visits for improved performance.

You can verify the above measures on WordPress.com’s official forum thread Here.

Page views in WordPress.org sites

Let’s discuss WordPress.org’s platform and explore whether users on WordPress.org’s self-hosted sites can see their page view hits in the dashboard.

By default, WordPress doesn’t track and show page views in a dashboard unless a site is programmatically configured for the said purpose. In simple words, WordPress.org sites don’t provide native feature(s) to track and show admins’ views in dashboards.

In this case, developers’ assistance may change the WordPress core files and insert a custom feature to count your page views – if you prefer changing WordPress’ interface for page view counts. Such scenarios are rare; hence WordPress provides better ways to track internal, external, or page views from Search Engine Bots.

On the other hand, other tools help you decide if a self-hosted WordPress site tracks users’ page views.

For example, once you’ve installed a plugin for analytics in WordPress, such as Monster Insights, your site is configured with default settings for counting your page views. In this case, the plugin doesn’t count views from logged-in users or admins.

If, for example, you’re the admin and logged out of the site you own, the same site configured with Monster Insights will count your views. Monster Insights can help you manage options to change or set counting features in its Settings.

Here, you can decide on one thing.

A WordPress-based site doesn’t count your views if a self-hosted WordPress site is not configured with a tracking measure for internal – admin views. In the case of Monster Insights, your site doesn’t count your views, as configured by the plugin.

Having that clarified, Monster Insights also helps you filter traffic hits in Google Analytics. Above all, Google Analytics also provides an option to filter internal traffic on WordPress sites. In this case, you will need to filter out traffic from specific IPs, regions, or expressions.

Page views: WordPress.com vs WordPress.org

WordPress.com and WordPress.org are two different aspects of WordPress sites – yet providing the same purpose for users.

WordPress.com is a company that helps users create free sites powered by the WordPress interface. Using its free options, you can create and manage a free site, such as one hosted on the Blogger platform.

The company also provides premium options for those who prefer personal domain names, web hosting, and advanced analytics.

On the other hand, WordPress.org is a different thing in nature.

WordPress.org represents the official resource of the WordPress platform. Thousands of developers contribute to the WordPress platform, as published on its official site – WordPress.org.

Unlike WordPress.com, a website built with WordPress.org requires a manual approach to creating and managing a site. The site created with the said approach is often called a self-hosted WordPress site.

In this case, users prefer downloading WordPress from its official resource, followed by setting up sites’ infrastructure on a web hosting platform.

On a site built on WordPress.com’s platform, users can only manage their page view counts if the platform provides an option. However, the case with a site built on WordPress.org is different.

For sites on WordPress.org, plugins can help you take competitive advantages. Once you’ve installed a plugin for the site’s analytics, you can filter out your views from traffic stats. However, plugins from different companies may prefer different settings to count admins’ page views on a WordPress site.

In some cases, you can change the said options for improved performance. For example, installing the Monster Insights plugin for WordPress analytics configures page view counting features for logged-in users. In this case, as Monster Insights needs integration with a Google Analytics account, it can also send updated measures to Google Traffic Stats for your site.

Final words

Page views from various locations need to be more precise if you’re trying to filter out specific sources, such as organic traffic, social media, or traffic from logged-in users.

However, the sites’ platforms may provide different options to track page views. As described in this write-up, WordPress.com is no longer counting page views for logged-in users and site visitors. On the other hand, sites built on WordPress.org provide a different approach to tracking site visitors and page views.

As described in this article, page views count in a self-hosted WordPress site is based on two options – a page view tracking mechanism in place and an analytics app set up on a site.

For more information on tracking, managing, or improving your site’s page views from various sources, you can let us know about your strategy for organic traffic, page views, or SEO.