How does Siteimprove count Page views when a clicked link is a redirect?

Summary

Siteimprove counts page views based on how tracking scripts register page loads during redirect behavior. Whether a redirect counts as one or multiple page views depends on how the redirect is implemented and whether tracking is triggered on each step.

Overview

This article explains how Siteimprove tracks and counts page views when users click links that involve redirects. Understanding this behavior helps clarify discrepancies in analytics data and ensures accurate interpretation of traffic metrics.

How page views are counted with redirects

How does Siteimprove count page views when a clicked link is a redirect?

Siteimprove tracks pages that load the Siteimprove Analytics code.
We also track clicks on links using “onClick” tracking, primarily to report on document downloads and outbound links clicks.

When a website link is clicked, the URL registered by “onClick” tracking is compared with the URL registered by the Siteimprove code on the resulting page:

• If both URLs are the same, this will be registered as one Page view,
• If the URLs are different and still on your website, this will be registered as two Page views

Therefore, a URL redirect will be seen as two Page views, one as a result of the “onClick” tracking, and one because of the Siteimprove code loading on the destination page.

This is again presuming that both URLs are internal, i.e. on your website.

Note: A redirect does not affect the visits registered. Both cases described in this article will be recorded as one visit.