Does the GitHub traffic graph include your own views?

Question

I have several projects on GitHub, and they all have the traffic graph where I can view how much traffic my repository is getting.

The blog post I had linked is very vague about visitors. It states:

..how many unique visitors it's had..

I just find it odd that some of my repositories have daily activity, but I'm not sure if most of those views are me, and if they are, why does it say "unique visitors" when i would be the only unique visitor

Question:

Does the traffic graph used on GitHub include yourself when navigating through your own source? It's very minor, but I'm genuinely curious if the views I'm getting is myself navigating through the source, or if I have people that are actually browsing through my source.

In specific, the line that shows "Views", not "Unique visitors" because unique visitors will obviously mean new people browsing the repository.

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Answer 1

It looks like this behavior has changed, and now the traffic by the repository owner's views does not count when the owner is logged in.

A recent support question asked this, among others, and received the following reply from a member of staff:

2. My visit to my repository also count as a visit?

No, viewing your own repository while signed in doesn’t count towards this data.

I have checked that his holds by checking one of my repositories: the graph shows no views even on days when I visited the repository several times.

Answer 2

OK I just contacted support and received a response:

Hello -

> Do the numbers in the traffic graphs include your own views? What about the view of contributors?

Thanks for getting in touch! Yes, the numbers include everyone's views including repository owners and contributors. There's no way to filter this information at the moment, but I can definitely add that as a feature request for the team to consider.

Hope that answers your question - thanks!

So it does include your own views, but they might add the option to filter it later.

Answer 3

It is latest update as on 22nd Dec 2021 from GIT support that it is still recording owner's own views on owner's repository

Answer 4

From what I have experienced, as of November 2021, it does count the owner as a viewer. It is unclear as to why it counts as a unique viewer.

To be specific, I have seven repositories in GitHub, to which all of them have been inactive. On the 8th of November, 2021, I decided to check the traffic from all of them. Besides the portfolio, none of them gained traffic. The next day, all of them from yesterday gained traffic. Coincidence? No.

Answer 5

Yep, it appears that Github counts your own visits to your repositories too. In this image, the "Traffic' page has 8 views from 1 visitor. Given that, the Traffic page is available only to the owner of the repository, you can deduct that Github counts your own visits too.