Blog Views & URL Scan

[AHall80]

Our blog has a lot more views today while we are scanning our URL with HubSpot. These extra views are from HubSpot scanning our blog, right? Is there a way for me to see the blog views that are not from HubSpot scanning our blog?

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

I'm with you on this @PamCotton - if you can add that UTM to the scans @AHall80 you might be able to see the difference. 

Honestly, if HubSpot scans your site once, that's only one session or one additional page view on each page (depending on which traffic analytics view you're using). I don't think it repeats it a bunch, so I don't think it's a significant traffic spike. 

I'd look at those views/sessions and see if you can dig into their sources. Did they come from direct traffic? That might indicate a HubSpot scan. But if they came from referrals or organic search or something, then it's a real traffic spike. 

Just my 2 cents. 😊

[PamCotton]

Hey @AHall80, Happy Wednesday!

I'm glad to hear that our blog is experiencing increased views! Regarding your question about distinguishing views from HubSpot scanning and other sources, 

one way to differentiate between views generated by HubSpot scanning and other sources is by using UTM parameters in your blog URLs. UTM parameters are tags added to the end of a URL that track the source, medium, and campaign of traffic to your site.

For example, you could create a unique UTM parameter specifically for HubSpot scanning, such as '?utm_source=HubSpot'. By appending this parameter to the end of your blog URLs, you'll be able to track views specifically generated by HubSpot scanning in your analytics tool.

To our top experts, @danmoyle, @GRajput, @RatulRahman, any recommendations for @AHall80 matter?

Thank you,

Pam

[danmoyle · Accepted solution]

I'm with you on this @PamCotton - if you can add that UTM to the scans @AHall80 you might be able to see the difference. 

Honestly, if HubSpot scans your site once, that's only one session or one additional page view on each page (depending on which traffic analytics view you're using). I don't think it repeats it a bunch, so I don't think it's a significant traffic spike. 

I'd look at those views/sessions and see if you can dig into their sources. Did they come from direct traffic? That might indicate a HubSpot scan. But if they came from referrals or organic search or something, then it's a real traffic spike. 

Just my 2 cents. 😊

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

@AHall80 I can confirm that the scan doesn't cause multiple page views, there's a single view per page/post when you run a scan - I've also run before/after checks on page views when running a scan and some of the pages while scanned didn't have a change in views, not sure why it's not a consistent result, it could just be a coincidence with traffic to other pages (especially since scan traffic can't be isolated, I assumed based on the testing I did that it was being excluded automatically).