Publishing and domains
See who is reading, without cookie-banner theatre
Folio counts page views and conversions first-party and cookieless. You can also bring Google Analytics, Tag Manager, or PostHog.
step 1
Read the built-in Insights
Page views, sessions, top paths, and conversion events are collected first-party with hashed visitor identifiers and no tracking cookie. Conversions include a scheduling link being opened and a resume, portfolio, or press PDF being downloaded, which are the events that actually mean something on a personal site. The Search and AI discovery panel shows how many visitors arrived from search engines such as Google and Bing, and how many from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Copilot, with the top source, the pages they landed on, and the daily trend.
- Check which pages people land on, not just how many.
- Watch resume downloads. That is the signal a recruiter engaged.
- Watch discovery visits grow after you connect Search Console and add an FAQ.
- Do not read anything into single-day spikes.
step 2
Bring your own analytics and track every interaction
In Settings, Analytics and tracking, add a Google Analytics 4 measurement ID, a Google Tag Manager container, or a PostHog project key. Google tags use Consent Mode v2: in Advanced mode (the default) they load on every visit with cookies off until a visitor accepts, and in Basic mode they wait for consent. PostHog always waits for consent. With deep interaction tracking on, your tools receive clicks, scroll depth, hovers, section views, outbound links, downloads, contact clicks, forms, video plays and page speed, under names that never repeat the ones Google collects itself, so nothing is counted twice.
- GA4 measurement ID (starts with G-): in Google Analytics open Admin, Data streams, choose your web stream or create one for your site address, and copy the Measurement ID.
- GTM container ID (starts with GTM-): in Google Tag Manager create or open a Web container; the ID sits beside the container name at the top of the workspace.
- PostHog project API key (starts with phc_): in PostHog open Settings, Project, and copy the Project API key. Leave PostHog host blank for US cloud, or use https://eu.i.posthog.com for EU cloud.
- Paste what you use, choose Save settings, then use Verify on the same screen to confirm each address shows your tags.
- Register the custom dimensions listed there so event details show in GA4 reports.
- Using Tag Manager, import the ready-made container from settings. Your subdomain and custom domain run it; the shared platform address runs GA4 only.
- Open your site with ?folio_debug=1 to watch events arrive in GA4 DebugView.
step 3
Know what the numbers can and cannot tell you
A personal site gets small numbers, and small numbers are noisy. A single share can double a week. Read the direction over a month rather than the height of any one day, and treat a resume download as worth more than a hundred views.
- Compare months, not days.
- Treat conversions as the real metric and views as context.
- Do not redesign the site because of one quiet week.