There are a few ways to determine how many people are looking at a Chatter post. There’s the view count, the Seen by count, and the counts you find in the Interaction Count Report. Although there’s crossover in terms of what’s being counted, the counts for a given post can be different for each type. Let’s examine why.
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The view count is available in all Chatter feeds. View count increases whenever someone likes, comments on, shares, or navigates to the detail view of the post. Views are counted each time one of these actions is taken. That is, if you visit a feed item detail view in the morning, then again in the afternoon, that’s counted as two views. When the person who posted visits that feed item later in the day, it’s counted as a view.
The Seen by count is available in private and unlisted Chatter groups. The count increases whenever someone likes, comments on, edits, shares, or navigates to the detail view of a post. An item is also considered seen when a user has it in view on their screen or when they scroll past it. A seen-by action is counted only once for a given person. The person who posted the feed item isn’t included in the count. If you visit a feed item detail in the morning, then again in the afternoon, that’s counted as one seen-by event. A feed item’s seen-by count can differ from its view count. With seen-by, more actions are counted and each person’s activity is counted only once.
In a Chatter feed, you typically get one count or the other. View count and seen-by count almost never appear together in the same feed. There are rare occasions when seen-by information isn't available and view count is displayed instead. If you turn seen-by off for a selected profile, the users with that profile see view count.
The Interaction Count Report shows the top 100 feed item views over the last week in your org or Experience Cloud site. The count you get from an Interaction Count Report increases when someone likes, comments on, shares, or navigates to the feed item’s detail view. Interactions are counted each time one of these actions is taken. For example, when a user comments on a post three times, it’s counted as three views. In this way, view count and the interaction count are alike.
So, why don’t the counts in the Interaction Count Report match the view count? There are three reasons.
- Interaction counts aggregate only one week of data at a time. View counts aggregate continuously over time.
- Interaction counts include only the top 100 feed items that had the most views within a week.
- Multiple views by the same user within a brief period are each counted as interactions. Multiple views within the same period are counted only once for view counts.
Here’s another way to look at these differences.
| Questions | Interaction Count Report | View Count | Seen By Count |
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| Can one viewer be counted more than once? |
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| Are likes, comments, shares, and visits to the detail view counted? |
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| Does scrolling past the feed item or having it in view count? |
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| When they take an included action, like commenting or sharing, is the feed item author included in the count? |
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| Are multiple views by the same person within a brief period counted as multiple views or interactions? |
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| Do actions performed through APIs count in the same way as actions performed through the UI? |
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