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What do my Stats mean?
What do my Stats mean?

This article gives a breakdown of metrics collected on Forbes for writers as well as important changes that should be noted.

Jinal Patel avatar
Written by Jinal Patel
Updated over a week ago

To get to your Author Stats page, click the "See More Stats" button on the story dashboard OR go to "My Stats" in the Navigation Menu.



Top Summary Section

The Top Summary Section shows your total amount of Followers and Pageviews, as counted from January 1, 2019. If you need access to historical data, please contact your editor.

Followers are your most loyal audience members. They've clicked the blue Follow button on one of your articles or your Forbes home page. By doing this, they get email updates when you publish new stories.

Also, you can see when your stats pages was last updated with fresh metrics via the timestamp on the bottom right of this section.



***All following data, unless otherwise noted, is for the date range you select in the Date Selector bar (shown below). Currently, data can only be displayed by months.***


Key Stats

Key Stats outlines the basic performance of your stories as told by pageviews, and how it might correlate to when, and how much, you publish.

Metric

Definition

Published Stories

The number of stories you have published

Pageviews

The number of times readers have looked at any of your stories

Pageviews On Recent Stories

The number of times readers have looked at your stories that were published within the last 365 days


Audience Engagement

In this section, you will see a breakdown of your audience behavior. Are they frequent readers (Repeat visitors)? Have they read your stories just once (One-Time visitors)? Understanding these trends can help you identify opportunities to build loyal audiences.

A visit is a reader's journey through Forbes.com and your stories. It can contain one or more pageviews.

A visitor is a reader of your stories.

We split your visitor data by Visitors To All Stories (readers of any of your stories) and Visitors To Recent Stories (readers of stories you've published in the last 365 days).

Metric

Definition

Total Visitors

Your entire audience (One Time + Repeat Visitors)

One-Time (Unique) Visitors

The number of readers that have read your stories once. (A one-time visitor can read more than one story in a session)

Repeat Visitors

The number of readers that have visited your stories more than once over a time range

Digital Subscription Conversions

The number of visitors that bought a subscription to Forbes.com while reading one of your stories

Registered Reader Conversions

The number of visitors that created a Forbes account and opted in to marketing emails while reading one of your stories or from your Forbes.com page


Top Search Keywords

Search keywords are the words and/or phrases that readers use to discover your stories on Google Search. The associated metrics demonstrate how popular a keyword is, and how relevant your story is, for that keyword.

Metric

Definition

Impressions

The number of times your stories appear when a person searches for a specific word or phrase

Clicks

The number of times a person clicks your story in the results after searching for a specific word or phrase

CTR (Click-Through-Rate)

The number of clicks divided by the number of impressions


Top Stories

The Top Stories section lists your top 5 stories with the most pageviews for the selected time range.

If you click the bar chart icon on the right hand side, you can take a look at each story’s full stats (Story Stats page).


Top Traffic Sources

Top traffic sources lists where readers are discovering your stories and how many pageviews you are getting from those places.

The source name is listed (ie, Google), with the type of Channel it's categorized as below it (ie, Search).

Pageviews by Traffic Channel

Traffic Sources are grouped into categories called “Channels,” which give higher level insight into where readers discover your stories. Below is a summary of the channel groupings we use:

Channel Type

What is it?

Search

Search engine websites like Google, Bing, Duckduckgo, Yahoo, and more

Direct

Forbes.com and Forbes social handles

Social

Organic recommendations via Twitter (includes t.co), Facebook, and more

Referral

Traffic to your stories from another site

Content Aggregators

Flipboard, Google News, and more

Newsletter



Important Changes

*Our definition of Recency changed on April 1st, 2022 from being 90 days to 365 days*

  • Before 4/1/22: anything published within the last 90 days was considered “Recent.”

  • On and After 4/1/22: anything published within the last 365 days is considered “Recent.”

Key Stats - Pageviews on Recent Stories

  • Before 4/1/22: Pageviews on Recent Stories are any pageviews on stories published within the last 90 days that occurred within the date range selected.

  • On and After 4/1/22: Pageviews on Recent Stories are any pageviews on stories published within the last 365 days that occurred within the date range selected.

Audience Engagement - Visitors to Recent Stories

  • Before 4/1/22: Total, One-Time, and Repeat Visitors will be Readers that have visited a published story the last 90 days within the selected date range.

  • On and After 4/1/22: Total, One-Time, and Repeat Visitors will be Readers that have visited a published story the last 365 days within the selected date range.

Author Stats - Registered Reader Conversion

  • On and After 4/1/22: Users will start to see “Registered Reader Conversions” under Audience Engagement in Author Stats.

  • Registered Reader Conversion is the amount of readers that have created an account AND opted in to marketing emails from one of your posts or your Forbes.com page.

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