Unique Devices data available on API

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Nuria Ruiz

19 Apr 2016 19 Apr '16

7:17 p.m.

Hello! The analytics team is happy to announce that the Unique Devices data is now available to be queried programmatically via an API. This means that getting the daily number of unique devices [1] for English Wikipedia for the month of February 2016, for all sites (desktop and mobile) is as easy as launching this query: https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/metrics/unique-devices/en.wikipedia.org/a… You can get started by taking a look at our docs: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/Unique_Devices#Quick_Start If you are not familiar with the Unique Devices data the main thing you need to know is that is a good proxy metric to measure Unique Users, more info below. Since 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation used comScore to report data about unique web visitors. In January 2016, however, we decided to stop reporting comScore numbers [2] because of certain limitations in the methodology, these limitations translated into misreported mobile usage. We are now ready to replace comscore numbers with the Unique Devices Dataset . While unique devices does not equal unique visitors, it is a good proxy for that metric, meaning that a major increase in the number of unique devices is likely to come from an increase in distinct users. We understand that counting uniques raises fairly big privacy concerns and we use a very private conscious way to count unique devices, it does not include any cookie by which your browser history can be tracked [3]. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Unique_Devices [2] [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ComScore/Announcement [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Unique_Devices#How_do_we_count_uni… devices.3F

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Gergo Tisza

19 Apr 19 Apr

8:54 p.m.

Very interesting, thank you! Do you have any estimate of how much this overcounts? I checked the monthly uniques for huwiki <https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/metrics/unique-devices/hu.wikipedia.org/all-sites/monthly/20160301/20160331>, and it's about 5.8 million, which is a bit higher than the total number of internet users in Hungary (estimated to 5.2 million). This Gemius analyis <http://www.gemius.com/all-reader-news/is-wikipedia-still-popular.html> from a year ago claims a 30% reach for Wikipedia, which would be about 1.5 million. They use a software panel (a demographically representative group of volunteers who installed tracking software) so they might be inaccurate (and they only count traffic originating from Hungary I think) but probably not by a factor of four. On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 9:17 PM, Nuria Ruiz <nuria(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

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Kevin Leduc

9:50 p.m.

Here's another useful link to a form that helps you construct the API call: https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/?doc#!/Unique_devices_data/get_metrics_un… On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 12:17 PM, Nuria Ruiz <nuria(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

Erik Zachte

9:52 p.m.

New subject: [Wikitech-l] Unique Devices data available on API

Like Nuria said: this is unique devices, not unique people. Many people in the Global North use more than one device to access Wikipedia (desktop, tablet, phone). Also I'd like to add a caveat: any long term change will have to factor in that this ratio of devices owned per user isn't fixed over time. Erik Zachte -----Original Message----- From: Wikitech-l [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gergo Tisza Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2016 22:54 To: A mailing list for the Analytics Team at WMF and everybody who has an interest in Wikipedia and analytics. Cc: Wikimedia developers; Research into Wikimedia content and communities Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] [Analytics] Unique Devices data available on API Very interesting, thank you! Do you have any estimate of how much this overcounts? I checked the monthly uniques for huwiki <https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/metrics/unique-devices/hu.wikipedia.org/all-sites/monthly/20160301/20160331>, and it's about 5.8 million, which is a bit higher than the total number of internet users in Hungary (estimated to 5.2 million). This Gemius analyis <http://www.gemius.com/all-reader-news/is-wikipedia-still-popular.html> from a year ago claims a 30% reach for Wikipedia, which would be about 1.5 million. They use a software panel (a demographically representative group of volunteers who installed tracking software) so they might be inaccurate (and they only count traffic originating from Hungary I think) but probably not by a factor of four. On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 9:17 PM, Nuria Ruiz <nuria(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

Hello! The analytics team is happy to announce that the Unique Devices data is now available to be queried programmatically via an API. This means that getting the daily number of unique devices [1] for English Wikipedia for the month of February 2016, for all sites (desktop and mobile) is as easy as launching this query: https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/metrics/unique-devices/en.wikipedia. org/all-sites/daily/20160201/20160229 You can get started by taking a look at our docs: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/Unique_Devices#Quick_Sta rt If you are not familiar with the Unique Devices data the main thing you need to know is that is a good proxy metric to measure Unique Users, more info below. Since 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation used comScore to report data about unique web visitors. In January 2016, however, we decided to stop reporting comScore numbers [2] because of certain limitations in the methodology, these limitations translated into misreported mobile usage. We are now ready to replace comscore numbers with the Unique Devices Dataset . While unique devices does not equal unique visitors, it is a good proxy for that metric, meaning that a major increase in the number of unique devices is likely to come from an increase in distinct users. We understand that counting uniques raises fairly big privacy concerns and we use a very private conscious way to count unique devices, it does not include any cookie by which your browser history can be tracked [3]. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Unique_Devices [2] [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ComScore/Announcement [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Unique_Devices#How_do_we_coun t_unique_ devices.3F _______________________________________________ Analytics mailing list Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics

_______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Gergo Tisza

10:12 p.m.

New subject: [Wikitech-l] Unique Devices data available on API

On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 11:52 PM, Erik Zachte <ezachte(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

Like Nuria said: this is unique devices, not unique people. Many people in the Global North use more than one device to access Wikipedia (desktop, tablet, phone).

Madhumitha Viswanathan

10:26 p.m.

New subject: [Wikitech-l] Unique Devices data available on API

Wouldn't our numbers reflect all unique devices access Hungarian wikipedia from across the globe and not just Hungary? I just ran some queries internally(where we have country breakdowns) and found that ~1.38 million unique devices accessing hu.wikipedia in the month of March '16 come from outside Hungary. On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 3:12 PM, Gergo Tisza <gtisza(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 11:52 PM, Erik Zachte <ezachte(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

Like Nuria said: this is unique devices, not unique people. Many people in the Global North use more than one device to access Wikipedia (desktop, tablet, phone).

Sure, and browses which rejects or periodically delete cookies will be counted multiple times, and a device might use multiple browsers (especially the embedded browsers on mobile devices)... even taking all that into account, a factor of four seems like a large disparity between this data and the audience panel numbers. _______________________________________________ Analytics mailing list Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics

-- --Madhu :)

Nuria Ruiz

20 Apr 20 Apr

12:16 a.m.

New subject: [Wikitech-l] Unique Devices data available on API

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Sure, and browses which rejects or periodically delete cookies will be

counted multiple times Actually no, they will be counted only once towards the period in which we are counting them (daily or monthly) as long as the IP of the device is the same. Not multiple times. In mobile IPs are shared due to NAT-ing and thus, this method undercounts. This is explained in detail here: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/Unique_Devices/Last_access_so…

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a device might use multiple browsers (especially the embedded browsers on

mobile devices) This is correct, multiple browsers on one device will be counted multiple times. This is less of a common browsing pattern than using the same method of access every time. On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 3:12 PM, Gergo Tisza <gtisza(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 11:52 PM, Erik Zachte <ezachte(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

Like Nuria said: this is unique devices, not unique people. Many people in the Global North use more than one device to access Wikipedia (desktop, tablet, phone).

Nuria Ruiz

12:26 a.m.

New subject: [Wikitech-l] Unique Devices data available on API

...

>a factor of four seems like a large disparity between this data and the

audience panel numbers.

...

Wouldn't our numbers reflect all unique devices access Hungarian wikipedia

from across the globe and not just Hungary? I just ran some queries internally(where we have >country breakdowns) and found that ~1.38 million unique devices accessing hu.wikipedia in the month of March '16 come from outside Hungary. Correct, the traffic (in terms of devices) is spread across the globe. A pretty sizable portion of traffic (in terms of devices) for Spanish Wikipedia comes from Brazil, Italy, France and Canada for example. On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 3:12 PM, Gergo Tisza <gtisza(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 11:52 PM, Erik Zachte <ezachte(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

Like Nuria said: this is unique devices, not unique people. Many people in the Global North use more than one device to access Wikipedia (desktop, tablet, phone).

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Erik Zachte
Gergo Tisza
Kevin Leduc
Madhumitha Viswanathan
Nuria Ruiz