How we count

Where the numbers come from

Your numbers come from how visitors use All About Pets Directory. We record when a visitor opens your listing or one of your animals, when one of your cards appears on a browse page, and when someone clicks through to your website, phone, email, social pages, or an animal's page on your site.

Nothing is bought from a third party and nothing is guessed. If we did not see it happen on the site, it is not in your numbers.

Approximate, and updated nightly

Counts are approximate. Some visitors use browsers or settings that block measurement, and we respect that rather than work around it.

Every night we add the day's counts to your listing, so the tab shows numbers through yesterday. A number can shift slightly for a day or two as late-arriving counts settle.

Our own team is left out

Visits from our team are excluded, so testing a page or checking a listing never inflates your numbers.

No individual visitors

You see totals, never people. We do not show who visited, where they live, or what else they looked at, and nothing we hold could identify a visitor. Each one is a random code in their own browser, not a name.

What a view is

A page view is one visit to your public page. An animal view is one visit to one of your animals' pages. The same person coming back tomorrow counts again: that is a visit, not a person.

What an impression is

An impression, shown as Seen on your tab, is one time your listing's card or one of your animals' cards was at least half visible on a browse page such as the directory, the adopt pages, or the home page. Scrolling past counts once. Scrolling back up does not count again.

What a click-through is

A click-through is one click that leaves your listing or an animal's page for you: your website, your phone number, your email, your social pages, or the Adopt button, which takes the visitor to that animal on your site.

It counts the moment a visitor heads your way. Whether they went on to call, write or apply happens on your side, so it is not something we can see or report.

Where visitors came from

We sort each visit by what brought it: a search engine, a social network, our newsletter, an email, another website, browsing All About Pets, or a direct visit with nothing before it. A visitor who arrived from Facebook and opened three of your animals counts as social for all three.

Found you on All About Pets means the visitor was already on our site, browsing the directory or the adopt pages, and came to your listing from there. Direct means they came straight to your page, from a saved or typed link.

People counts each visitor once in the period you pick, however many times they came back. A visitor who came two ways, say from a search and later from our newsletter, counts once under each.

How the benchmark is formed

The line that reads like "Rescues like yours typically had 190 page views" compares you with other listings of the same type over the same days. We use the median, the middle value, so one very busy listing cannot set the bar.

The line appears only when at least five other comparable listings had a visit in that window, and it never names another listing.

Adoptions and features

Adopted counts animals whose status changed to adopted on your listing in the period. For listings we read from a rescue's own website, that means our reading saw the change.

Featured by us counts the times we put your animals in our weekly picks email or on our social channels.