The number of views has appeared in the contact. How does the VKontakte view counter algorithm work?

Before the launch of the counter, ordinary users could judge the popularity of publications by indirect parameters - “likes” and “reposts”. Exact number views were known only to the page owners themselves.

“Sometimes the number of likes does not show how interesting a post really is - the real number of views is always many times higher,” - explained head of web development at VKontakte Vadim Dorokhov. According to him, the new indicator will be additional source feedback and motivation for content authors that will tell you what information is of greatest interest among the audience.

The editors of the site turned to representatives of VKontakte, agencies and brands to find out who needs the new indicator and why and how it will affect work on the social network.

Just a new tool

According to the head of the VKontakte press service, Evgeniy Krasnikov, for the author this is just another source of feedback - as is the number of “Like” marks and the number of users and communities that shared the author’s post.

VKontakte Development Director Alexander Kruglov, in a conversation with the site, noted that this could become a new tool for business: “Likes as a measure of success are depreciating. Authors do not understand how much their content is in demand. SMM specialists look at each other’s “likes,” but for business “likes” are not important at all,” he says.

Useless indicator

SMM director of the Affect agency Roman Kolosov, on the contrary, believes that this indicator will not help to evaluate a business and measure the effectiveness of the community.

Roman Kolosov

SMM director at Affect agency

An effective tool for interaction between brands and agencies

Brand representatives agree that the innovation will force publication authors to take the preparation of material more seriously, evaluate competitors, or at least discipline the relationship between agencies and brands.

This is an excellent indicator: it gives a more detailed picture of competitor and media activity in social network. We at Sberbank are really looking forward to the VKontakte team improving the functionality, and then it will become possible to view the full coverage of records, and not just a small part of them. I think this indicator will improve the quality of brand content and reduce the risk of fraud from unscrupulous media and SMM agencies.

Albert Usmanov

Director of Digital Marketing at Sberbank

As for the client-agency relationship, the new indicator will allow us to build another index of the effectiveness of published content. I don’t think that the views counter will globally affect the quality of content within the social network, but to some extent it should rid the VKontakte brand platforms of information garbage and force content makers to think about the preferences of the audience. The availability of such information to all visitors makes the counter even more valuable from the point of view of analyzing competitive activity. This allows you to collect current content trends within the topic and experiment.

Dina Basyrova

Head of content development on digital platforms AlfaLab

Managing partner at Little Big Agency Maxim Yurin has a positive attitude towards the innovation, but notes that when evaluating publications it is important to separate personal and professional goals.

Recently the social network In contact with» presented new opportunity to increase the vanity of its users - views in vk. Below we will conduct research into what views are in VC, and what new opportunities they open up for users of the social network.

The essence and purpose of views on VKontakte

Views in VC are a visual display of statistical data regarding the number of social network members who visited the user’s page or saw a specific published post. The view counter is located in the lower left corner of each post published by the user. Represented in the form of an eye with a number located next to it, the number indicates the number of views of this post.

Views option VC does not apply to posts published by users before the implementation of the functionality of the option in question.

A number of users in vk, previously actively exploiting additional applications and widgets informing about page guests, at first they were immensely happy that they would now know who was interested in their self-positioning in a virtual profile. But later they became sad again and returned to additional plugins “guests in VC", "my paranoia" and so on (all application names are fictitious - any coincidence with real names must be considered an accident), since the social network " In contact with"remained true to its policy of anonymity, and views in VC have become simply a visual counter that counts the number of people who have viewed a post, without identifying individuals.

All plugins work on the principle of tracking the activity of social network participants (likes, comments, reposts). Based on these actions, third-party software provides photos and usernames as guests on the page. When a user visits a page without taking active actions, tracking him by the program becomes impossible. In general, the use of such programs is undesirable, according to the administration and old-timers VC, since not all applications are tested and may contain viruses and other malicious code in their code software, including provoking the theft of the user’s password. Another unpleasant thing is that most third-party plugins contain annoying ads.

Views vs Statistics

It is necessary to differentiate between the option " VK views", which the developers of the social network announced in 2017 as an innovation, and the option " Statistics", which opens up similar opportunities, and maybe even more ample opportunities, but is not available to all users.

User statistics in VC is a collection of information about page traffic given user and the activity of other social network participants on his page. Statistical data is available to the user if he has 100 subscribers or more. The icon for going to statistics is located under the main profile photo in the lower right corner.

Clicking on this icon provides access to extensive information:

Additional information in " Statistics» can be obtained by going to top menu in the headings "" or " Activity».

An important difference between the option “ Views on VK" from the option " Statistics" is publicity of the first and confidentiality (available only to the owner of the profile) of the second.

Hiding the counter from prying eyes It is impossible to access the page without restriction.

Conclusion

As it became clear from the above, the newly introduced option for viewing in VC has become simply a visual counter that counts the number unique visitors who viewed the post.

Video on the topic

More than other people, we are interested in... our own person. Indeed, representatives of the human race are designed in such a way that most of the time they tend to think about themselves and about the impression they make on others. Today, with the increased popularity of social networks, we can enjoy the attention to our lives, put something on display, brag about something or complain to get support. And, of course, we want to know if someone is watching us in virtual space, is interested in our life. For this purpose, there are personal pages on VKontakte or other resources that our friends and other users can visit. If desired, we can find out how many times a day our page was viewed and whether there were unique visitors to it. "VKontakte" this is possible thanks to the "Statistics" service. Read more about it and the opportunities it provides below. But first, let's define what views are and what the difference is between them and unique guests.

Unique visitors and views: what are they and how are they different?

Understanding what views are is not difficult. This is the number of times other users have visited your page. It doesn't matter whether it was the same person. Or there were several of them. Each new visit is plus one to the number of views.

Another thing is unique visitors. "VKontakte" are users who, over a certain period of time (in in this case day) visited your page for the first time. This is established based on the IP computer from which the login was made, as well as the uniqueness of the account with a specific login/password pair. Here it is worth considering the following: if the same person visited the page twice with different devices or from one, but under different accounts, then he will be counted by the system as two unique visitors. Because of this, discrepancies with real and actual data may occur.

Thus, unique visitors and VKontakte views are not the same thing. They may vary. The number of views is always greater than or equal to the number of uniques in your statistics, but it is never the other way around.

VKontakte statistics: how to get

Let's figure out where we can get these statistics and how to analyze them. In order for it to appear on your page, you need to do required condition- you must have at least 100 subscribers. Otherwise this service will not be available to you. When the specified number of subscribers is reached, statistics will appear automatically in the left column of the page (in the same place as audio and video recordings, photographs, etc.). In a group, if you are its administrator, it is available immediately after creation.

What will the "Statistics" service tell you?

So, what data does the VKontakte page statistics provide:

unique visitors and views (attendance);
audience reach;
visitor activity.

Each section has graphs that visually provide information about when and how many times your page was visited from other accounts. Using geographic and demographic graphs, you can track which countries and cities your visitors are from, what age and gender they are. At the same time, unique visitors to VKontakte are the bottom graph, and views are the top graph (there are always more of them, rarely the same number). If there are not very many visits, then you can try to determine (using this data) which of your friends specifically looked at your page. If your popularity is high, then this will be difficult, almost impossible.

Audience Reach

In the "Reach" section, you can get information about your audience. This displays all users who viewed the wall on your page and were also interested in your news. Data can be obtained both per day (for specific days) and for the entire month.

Guest activity

The "Activity" section will tell you how active your page's visitors were. This is determined based on the posts and photos they commented on, the likes they gave, and the reposts they made. You can also see who hid you from their news feed. For some, this is a reason to think about how interesting the content and photos they provide are to other people.

Is it possible to find out who specifically visited a page?

For many users, the information provided by statistics is not enough. It is not surprising, because the most important thing remains a secret - the specific names of the guests. How to view VKontakte visitors, receiving more full information about their personality? The answer is simple: “No way.” Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), it is impossible, and never has been possible, to find out exactly which users looked at your VKontakte page.

Some people will disagree now, because there are a lot of applications that allow you to catch guests, for example, “My fans and guests” and others. Most often, the work of such applications is as follows: they collect statistics about various actions that visitors make on the user’s page. This can be likes and comments, reposts, etc. Then the user who installed the application is given information about his fans and guests, based on such statistics. Most apps warn about this, but few people read all the details. Agree, you can track the above actions yourself.

Visitor tracking apps can be dangerous

In addition, the site administration warns users to beware various applications and programs offering a dubious service of “catching” guests. This may result in unpleasant consequences, for example, such programs often stole passwords from user accounts and started sending spam from their page, blocked access to it, etc.

Most of the apps that promise to reveal all the cards and show your visitors with their names/profile links are created for the sake of making money. Naive users install them, providing access to personal information, and then also send SMS messages or register their mobile numbers on suspicious sites, and in the end - without money and without information about visitors.

Trap for the curious

There is another service that has attracted considerable interest from curious users, looking for ways how to view visitors to the VKontakte page. It was a trap for guests who came to the page and were looking for something interesting. The trap was an ordinary reference supposedly to Personal diary user. A visitor crossing it would fall into a trap - into an application for tracking guests. A striking example A similar service can be called the Pathfinder application, which was released in two parts. However, the administration of the VKontakte website constantly blocks it, so it is unlikely that you will be able to use the service.

Statistics and nothing else

Thus, the question of how to look at unique visitors to VKontakte and find out how many times your page was viewed per day has only one answer. Use data obtained from statistics. There are no other ways. All you need to do is gain 100 or more subscribers, and the service will appear automatically. As for more detailed information, then it is impossible to obtain it. And is it necessary? After all, unique visitors to VKontakte are often just random people who got to the first page and last time. Let this be a little mystery for you.

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VKontakte is developing rapidly, providing users with improved tools for working with content. Recently, each post has a view counter. To see how many subscribers have viewed a post, you don’t need to go into the settings and look at the statistics - all the information is displayed directly under the post itself. Wherein this information available to all users: group administrators, page owners and subscribers.

What are VK views?

Regardless of how high-quality the material is published, it is not always possible to judge its popularity and success among users just by “Like” marks and comments under the post. It’s another matter if you look at the view counter under the post. By looking at the numbers, you can say with confidence how much or how little coverage she received and what type of post format is in greatest demand among subscribers. In other words, you can find out the audience’s interest in the content without any tools - just look at the numbers under the post and draw the appropriate conclusions.

Each post posted on a group wall or user page has this function by default - it cannot be disabled or in any way affect the values (except for cheating methods). The counter is located in the most visible place and characterizes how many people are on this moment looked at this entry. It doesn’t matter how exactly it received coverage:

A person can see it in their feed.
Visit the community wall.
Meet her in recommendations.

Today, there are two main opinions: some believe that the VKontakte view counter is a tool for communities and popular pages, is unique and effective method conducting targeted marketing that uses these numbers to attract potential clients and advertisers. Others, on the contrary, see it as a useless “feature” of the VKontakte social network.

How to see views of posts in VK

In order to find out the total number of people who viewed a post, you do not need to install third-party programs or go to your account or community settings: the option is displayed under each entry in the feed in the lower right corner. In this case, views (even in a profile with 2 subscribers) will be visible to all users, as in a group - administrators cannot hide or disable them. In other words, absolutely everyone who gets to the page will know about the coverage of VKontakte posts, with the exception of people on the blacklist. Unfortunately or fortunately, it is impossible to find out who exactly this or that view belongs to.

The views counter is available not only from the browser, but also from mobile applications. As in full version site, from mobile phone views are displayed immediately below the post and it doesn’t matter whether it’s text, a picture, an audio or video recording.

How are views on a VK wall counted?

As is known from official data, a special algorithm on the social networking site is responsible for the view counter, which keeps a record of each view of the publication: on the community wall, in the feed, on personal page user.

An important condition is that when quickly scrolling through posts, the counter does not record and does not count one to total number views. That is, even by going to a group wall or a person’s profile and scrolling through the wall with posts, without stopping and reading specific material, the counter will not record the view. To do this, you need to stay on a specific post for some time, without even showing any activity: without liking, commenting or sharing content with friends. To understand exactly how the view counter works, you need to know the following factors of its operation:

The views counter works regardless of the popularity of the page, the number of subscribers and the quality of posts.
Information about the total number of views is available to absolutely all users of the social network.
If a person does not leave any reaction to the content, it is impossible to find out who exactly watched a particular post.
This tool is relatively new - it began working at the beginning of 2017.
The VK counter counts your view only once.
If you quickly scroll through a community wall or user feed, the view will not be counted and the person will be able to return later to the entry and add another number to the counter.

The view counter is protected from cheating: if a person watched the post and his “vote” was counted, nothing will change when viewed again, even if the page is refreshed many times. However, if on a third-party exchange exchange you give users a task, for example, to write a comment and attach a link to the post, the view of a person or bot will be taken into account.

Why was the views counter created?

With the advent of the VKontakte view counter tool, many users wondered if it was possible using standard methods or when using special services get views for your post. After all, it is absolutely clear that by constantly updating the tab with the post, nothing will be added to it beyond what has already been received: one Account equals one view. The need to dishonestly gain attention to content is due to the fact that now, when ordering advertising, advertisers pay attention, in addition to general statistics in general and subscriber coverage in particular, based on views of each post.

Naturally, you can place orders on the promotion exchange and attract bots and people who complete tasks for points to massively put “Like” marks under the post or leave a comment - in this case, the view will be counted from each account, even those created automatically .

According to the developers of VK, the view counter was created so that users could post content and independently, without the involvement of third-party analytics programs and a built-in statistics section, could evaluate the reaction of the social network audience. In the future, this can help in the development of the community, since it becomes clear which particular post format is more in demand among subscribers.

In general, this function is useful not only for specialists professionally involved in promoting communities and attracting attention to specific product through social networks, but also for ordinary users, for whom the view counter is another motivation tool for publishing interesting and unique content.

How does the VKontakte view counter algorithm work?

It can be said without exaggeration that the view counter is one of the tools for analyzing business processes taking place on a social network. After all, anyone who runs a public page to sell goods or services can easily evaluate the effectiveness of the audience’s reaction to their offer and, using the results obtained (that is, view figures), adjust the ways of promoting the business and presenting content.

Today there is no clear understanding of how the operating algorithm works of this instrument. In particular, if the user scrolled through the feed quickly without stopping at specific entries, views will not be counted. To do this you need to pause certain time, and which one exactly there is no exact answer. On older posts, the counter did not appear, and there is no way to find out the exact amount of subscriber coverage under a specific post.

At the same time, in the user and group account settings there are no tools for hiding information from outsiders. According to reviews from administrators of large communities, this sometimes poses some inconvenience. In particular, this can interfere with the desire to hide information from competitors, when analyzing audience coverage and what percentage of subscribers are engaged. But it remains unknown whether the function to disable the view counter will soon appear in the community settings.

How are views on videos and photos counted on VK?

The social network VKontakte counts almost every user action: from the number of people who saw a post to the total reach of subscribers. And if previously it was possible to find out how many users saw a post, focusing solely on “Like” marks, today such a function is by default under every post in a group and on each person’s personal page.

For example, in the “Community Statistics” section, in the “Reach” and “Attendance” tabs, you can see the total number of users who viewed community posts on the wall or in the “News” section and see the average daily number of unique visitors. And under the posts you can see the number of coverage of a particular post.

The same applies to recording views of video and photo materials: when you open a video, in the bottom right corner you can see a counter showing how many people have already watched it. At the same time, the feed counts the views of the video itself. These numbers usually vary widely.

For example, a post can be seen by 1 thousand users, and under a video, this figure will be 500 views. It is important to note that watching a video can be counted even if you are not logged in to the site, if, of course, the privacy settings of the group or user account allow this. As for viewing photos, things here are the same as with regular posts.

As noted, you can see how many people watched a post, but you can't tell who actually visited the page and played the video or looked at the photos. Of course have third party programs And special applications VKontakte, which can be launched and used to track page visitors.

However, as practice shows, they can react exclusively to user actions: if a person watched a post and marked “Like”, such an application will send a notification about the guest. But if the user did not perform any actions, but only watched the content, only the view will be counted, and the programs will not calculate who exactly viewed the posts.

For some time now, the famous social network VKontakte began to show for all its users more more information: in March 2017, the resource administration officially announced a new update, thanks to which each user now has the opportunity to see the number of views on their own or someone else’s post. You will learn further in the article about how views are counted in VK and how it works in general.

What kind of views in VK under posts - detailed information

Vadim Dorokhov, head of web development of the social network, was the first to report on the statistics of VKontakte publications. In his opinion, it is not always possible to judge the quality of a particular publication by the number of “likes” (likes), but if we talk about the number of views, then it is quite possible to conclude which post is in greatest demand among network users. Thus, with the help of a view counter, you can much better identify the public’s interest in a particular content.

So what are views on VK under posts? Under each post (posts on the user’s wall, posts in community feeds) there is now a counter in the most visible place that shows how many views this content has had.

The entire Internet public in discussing this innovation of the social network VK was divided into 2 camps: some are confident that views are an effective tool for digital marketing, others consider the new “feature” to be a useless indicator.

How can I see views on VK?

Finding out the number of views on VK is as easy as pie: a new option is displayed in the lower right corner of each publication. It is worth knowing that views of your posts on your personal page will be seen not only by you, but also by all your friends and absolutely all VKontakte users (the only exception, perhaps, are those users whom you have added to the “black list”). But to find out who exactly viewed this or that entry, in currently impossible.

The view counter can now also be seen in updated mobile applications VK for two operating systems: iOS and Android. As in the main computer version, on smartphones it is visible under publications for all users of the social network.

How views are counted on VK - information from social network administrators

As the VKontakte administration explained, the site’s special algorithm counts views of any publication, be it a post on a wall in personal account or information published in the community. It is important to understand that if a user, having entered a group or another person’s page, simply scrolls through the wall/feed, then in this case the counter will not record the impression.

Briefly about what you need to know about views on VK:

The counter is installed both in communities and regular entries users on the wall
Not only the author of the publication sees the counter under it, but also all other VKontakte users
You won't be able to see exactly who viewed the post.
The counter only shows views, but if you decide to watch the post again, you will not add another view to it - it works reliable protection from markups
All views are counted since the beginning of January 2017
If a user scrolls a feed/wall, views of posts on it are not counted.

How to increase views on VK and is it possible: ideas, methods

As soon as the news about the introduction of a views counter on VKontakte spread throughout the Internet, some network users immediately began to have questions about how to increase views on VK. Obviously, by pressing f5 every time and refreshing the page in this way, it is unlikely that you can get the desired number of views.

Now you know how views on VK are counted and how you can view them on pages and in communities. The developers of the social network VKontakte hope that through the implemented view counter, Internet users will be able to even more easily monitor people’s reactions to their content. Press secretary of the Kyiv branch of the social network Vlad Legotkin emphasized that new feature in VK (views) will be useful not only for SMM managers and community owners, but also for ordinary users, since views will become another in an important way motivation for content authors.