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How we count scans

The number under a sticker is not a page-view counter.

Last updated: 2026-09-03

What counts

  • A scan is recorded from your browser once the page is actually displayed, not when the server renders it.
  • The same visitor counts once per sticker per day — a calendar day, in universal time.
  • Deliberate clicks to the owner's link are counted separately.

What does not count

  • Search crawlers, messaging link previews and monitoring tools, identified by their signature.
  • Browser prefetches, which load a page without anyone looking at it.
  • Repeated reloads from the same device.

Passages, not people

  • The fingerprint that tells visitors apart changes every day. Someone who comes back the next day is counted again: the figure counts passages, not people.
  • That is a deliberate choice: recognising someone from one day to the next would need a durable identifier left on their device, and that is exactly what we refuse to do.

Historical numbers

  • Stickers predating this redesign keep their original counter, which was incremented on every render. Their starting total is therefore more generous than the current method.