How Traffic measures website and social media traffic
Traffic reads each number from the source closest to it and never fills a gap. A day that was not measured stays empty instead of showing 0.
By Yılmaz Uyar, founder of Traffic. Updated November 1, 2026.
Where each number comes from
| Account | Source | What is counted | Updates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Websites | analytics.appfor.you | Visitors and pageviews by day, or by hour for a single day. | As visits arrive |
| Meta | Daily account views, likes, comments, shares, saves and total interactions. Meta keeps up to 90 days. | Once a day; recent days can change for up to 48 hours | |
| YouTube | YouTube Analytics | Daily channel views, likes and comments. | Once a day; YouTube reports a few days late |
| X | FxTwitter, an independent service | Current public views, likes, replies and reposts of each post, placed on the day it was shared. | Every hour for posts shared that UTC day; at 00:00 UTC for the last 30 days. Older posts keep their last count. |
| Other accounts | Buffer | The daily change in the counters of posts published through Buffer. | Once a day |
What is the difference between a visitor and a pageview?
A visitor is one person counted once in the selected period, even if they open ten pages or come back on another day. A pageview counts every page opened. Daily visitor figures cannot be added up into a period total, because the same person can return on several days.
Why are X numbers different from X Analytics?
Traffic shows public view counts, not X impressions. X does not offer past daily values through this route, so each post's current total is placed on the day it was shared. A chart peak therefore means posts shared that day have since gathered those views, not that the views arrived that day. Traffic War does not count X views.
What are the limits?
- Social views adds up different measures: views received each day on most platforms, and current post totals by share date on X.
- Average engagement on a chart is the simple mean of that day's likes, comments and shares or reposts. Instagram saves are left out because Meta can report them below zero.
- Meta does not report some Instagram metrics for accounts with fewer than 100 followers.
- Follower counts are the current count, not a figure for the selected period.