> in Safari and Chrome with the default settings, there is a native browser
feature that, when searching through the address bar (Google powered) by
default silently starts loading the url of >the top result shown below the
address bar.
Ah, I see, you mean searches happening "outside" the application just
through the search bar. To avoid confusion let's call those "eagerly
loading" a page (to distinguish them from the link directives for
prefetching). If those are happening: would they be counted as pageviews?
Yes.  Now, are they happening? That is a harder question to answer cause in
the absence of  a header you cannot distinguish those requests from
everything else. In any case, they do not happen deterministically for
everyone cause they rely on the prediction system in chrome.
See chrome://predictors/ [1] The fact that you have to enable them on your
browser  tells you usage is minimal so is this a concern for pageview
numbers? I do not think so.

>According to https://stackoverflow.com/a/9852667/4746236
>Some browsers do send a header that could be detected for these prefetches.
Please note that the answer for the question is for 2012 and it mixes
"pre-fetches [of] content (at the behest of the referrer page’s markup)"
(which are link directives)  [2] and "eagerly loading" of  a page (done
through "network action predictions") [1]

[1]
https://www.igvita.com/posa/high-performance-networking-in-google-chrome/#predictor
[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Link_prefetching_FAQ


On Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 6:41 AM Isaac Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:

> Yes, I checked Chrome/Mozilla as well and saw no evidence of prefetching
> for Wikipedia pages.
>
> Related point: it does appear that for media counts, that prefetching by
> the Media Viewer might change the counts:
> https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/Data_Lake/Traffic/Mediacounts#Corner_cases
>
> On Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 4:19 AM Addshore <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I just quickly tried this out live looking for a prefetch webrequest from
>> my chrome browser for a enwiki, enwiktionary and wikidata page but no
>> prefetching happened.
>>
>> After a quick search I found
>> https://www.technipages.com/google-chrome-prefetch and confirmed that
>> the prefetch setting is ON in my browser.
>>
>> Maybe prefetching doesn't happen for our sites? Or maybe something else
>> in my environment makes Chrome decide that it doesn't need to?
>>
>> According to https://stackoverflow.com/a/9852667/4746236
>> Some browsers do send a header that could be detected for these
>> prefetches.
>> But apparently Chrome is no longer one of those browsers,
>> https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=86175
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 20 Dec 2018 at 02:58, Timo Tijhof <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> Ugh, this wasn't meant to go on-list (obviously). Sorry!
>>>
>>> -- Timo
>>>
>>> On Wed, 19 Dec 2018 at 18:55, Timo Tijhof <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Nuria,
>>>>
>>>> As I understand it, in Safari and Chrome with the default settings,
>>>> there is a native browser feature that, when searching through the address
>>>> bar (Google powered) by default silently starts loading the url of the top
>>>> result shown below the address bar. Maybe there's a way we opted out, but I
>>>> think it applies to Wikipedia as well.
>>>>
>>>> I'm replying privately because I didn't understand the last part of
>>>> your email, and maybe we are saying the same thing :)
>>>>
>>>> -- Timo
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, 19 Dec 2018 at 14:14, Nuria Ruiz <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> > I think that's for the Page Previews feature (i.e., when a user
>>>>> hovers over a link on desktop Wikipedia) or
>>>>> > its corresponding feature in the the Wikipedia for Android
>>>>> (triggered by default on link tap)
>>>>> The code that Fran pointed to only discounts "previews" by Android app
>>>>> as we stablished that convention a while back. Page previews (hovers over
>>>>> wikipedia links that display a short popup) are not counted as pageviews 
>>>>> at
>>>>> all at this time.
>>>>>
>>>>> >By "prefetching", I meant X's Wikipedia page shows up in the search
>>>>> results and the browser prefetches/preloads the search results but I do 
>>>>> not
>>>>> click on X's Wikipedia page. If so, the >pageview data seem to over-count
>>>>> the number of visits to X's Wikipedia page.
>>>>> This functionality needs to be implemented by the client (it is not
>>>>> automagically implemented by the browser) and it is not implemented on
>>>>> Wikipedia. Searches trigger requests to the API, that return pageview 
>>>>> urls,
>>>>> not pageview prefetches. You can follow these workflows on the dev tools 
>>>>> of
>>>>> the browser you might be using. chrome://net-export/ is a new addition to
>>>>> the toolset that gives you a readable dump.
>>>>>
>>>>> >Are you saying that browser-based prefetch activity (e.g., with
>>>>> resource hinting like https://www.w3.org/TR/resource-hints/ ) is also
>>>>> tagged the same way?
>>>>> No. Browser prefetches cannot be tagged, they are initiated by the
>>>>> browser. Wikipedia's pages do not do any prefetches and or pre-renderings
>>>>> of content using those directives as far as I can see. dns-prefetches are
>>>>> done for two domains: login and meta, neither of which counts as a 
>>>>> pageview
>>>>> cause a dns prefetch does not receive an http response. Just instantiates 
>>>>> a
>>>>> connection and resolves TLS if any. Prefetches might be indicated by a
>>>>> standard set of headers like "Link:" in the future (this would be 
>>>>> initiated
>>>>> by the browser) but that seems on the works.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>
>>>>> Nuria
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 9:43 AM Adam Baso <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Fran, the preview to which you refer, I think that's for the Page
>>>>>> Previews feature (i.e., when a user hovers over a link on desktop
>>>>>> Wikipedia) or its corresponding feature in the the Wikipedia for Android
>>>>>> (triggered by default on link tap) and Wikipedia for iOS (force press)
>>>>>> apps, is that right? Are you saying that browser-based prefetch activity
>>>>>> (e.g., with resource hinting like
>>>>>> https://www.w3.org/TR/resource-hints/ ) is also tagged the same way?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Chenqi Zhu, I think what you're suggesting is the possibility that
>>>>>> browsers might be issuing HTTP prefetches for Wikimedia-hosted pages and
>>>>>> that could inflate pageviews. I'm not sure, but have you happened to
>>>>>> observe user agents making prefetches when resource hinting (
>>>>>> https://www.w3.org/TR/resource-hints/ ) is absent? I'm not sure how
>>>>>> often, if at all, discovery platforms like search engines are actually
>>>>>> placing resource hints into markup (which is mostly deterministic as far 
>>>>>> as
>>>>>> browser behavior) for Wikimedia content...nor to what degree there might 
>>>>>> be
>>>>>> heuristics being used for prefetching independently of any resource 
>>>>>> hints.
>>>>>> Do you have any data or field observations to help clarify?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Browser settings allude to this sort of behavior (e.g., in Chrome,
>>>>>> there's "Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly", which is
>>>>>> described at https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/114836 ),
>>>>>> although I think without digging into browser source code it's a bit hard
>>>>>> to know for certain what's going on "under the hood". We do use 
>>>>>> preconnect
>>>>>> and prefetch semantics and the like in different contexts (cf.
>>>>>> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/search/query/G2tr8i0YZii9 ,
>>>>>> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/search/query/.dtx_hqaj3wj ,
>>>>>> ...there may be more).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -Adam
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 11:00 AM Francisco Dans <[email protected]>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi Chenqi,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> You can find out more about what constitutes a pageview in its
>>>>>>> Metawiki article:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Page_view#Definition
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> As you can see, one of the conditions is whether the request being
>>>>>>> examined is a preview or not, in which case it is not counted as a page
>>>>>>> view. Hope this helps!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Fran
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Wed, Dec 19, 2018 at 5:30 PM Chenqi Zhu <[email protected]>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi everyone,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I am trying to better understand the pageview data. I have a quick
>>>>>>>> question. I apologize if the question has been asked or it is so naive.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> If the web browser prefetches a Wikipedia page, does it count as
>>>>>>>> one pageview in the pageview data? By "prefetching", I meant X's 
>>>>>>>> Wikipedia
>>>>>>>> page shows up in the search results and the browser 
>>>>>>>> prefetches/preloads the
>>>>>>>> search results but I do not click on X's Wikipedia page. If so, the
>>>>>>>> pageview data seem to over-count the number of visits to X's Wikipedia 
>>>>>>>> page.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Thanks in advance for any insight.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Chenqi Zhu
>>>>>>>> New York University
>>>>>>>> 44 W 4th St., Suite 10-185(B),
>>>>>>>> New York, NY 10012, U.S.A.
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Analytics mailing list
>>>>>>>> [email protected]
>>>>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> *Francisco Dans*
>>>>>>> Software Engineer, Analytics Team
>>>>>>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Analytics mailing list
>>>>>>> [email protected]
>>>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Analytics mailing list
>>>>>> [email protected]
>>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics
>>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Analytics mailing list
>>>>> [email protected]
>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Analytics mailing list
>>> [email protected]
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Analytics mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics
>>
>
>
> --
> Isaac Johnson -- Research Scientist -- Wikimedia Foundation
> _______________________________________________
> Analytics mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics
>
_______________________________________________
Analytics mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics

Reply via email to