Why don't the Answer Viewed and Answers Viewed by Product or Category reports generate the same numbers (Hits) in the Answer Summary section?
Environment:
Answers Viewed Reports
Issue:
The Answer Viewed and Answers Viewed by Product or Category reports are not generating the same numbers (Hits) in the Answer Summary section. The Answers Viewed report seems to be the more accurate of the two because the numbers more closely match the numbers of the Service Summary report. Sometimes, though, the Answers Viewed and Service Summary report have different results as well.
Resolution:
The Answers Viewed report counts the total number of answers viewed in the time frame specified.
Answers Viewed by Product or Category: If you have answers with multiple products and or categories specified, the number of hits in the Answers Viewed by Product and Answers Viewed by Category reports will be significantly higher than the Answers Viewed report.
With the Answers Viewed by Product or Category reports, since there is no means of knowing which of the various products and categories to associate the hits with, these reports increment once for each product/category selected.
In other words, if you have an answer that has 3 product values selected, viewing this Answer will increment the Answers Viewed by Product value 3 times, once under each of the product options. The Answers Viewed and Service Summary reports increment only once. As a result, the Answers Viewed by Product or Category reports can be much higher than the other reports.
Answers Viewed: The value in the Answers Viewed report usually matches the information in the Service Summary report.
These values may differ, however, if you have deleted answers from your database. Since the Answers Viewed report statistic is recorded by Answer ID, if an answer is deleted, so are the associated statistics. The child records are removed to maintain data integrity. The total in the Service Summary report remains the same since it is stored in another location, but the Answers Viewed Report is now fewer since it no longer includes the statistics of the deleted answer(s).
