Accepted Solutions
Hi Pam
This is a little bit of a limitation in ArcGIS Online that it is good to be aware of.
The view count you see for maps and apps in listings in ArcGIS Online, such as the List and Grid views in My Content, search results, and group contents isn't the most up-to-date view count for the item: it's a cached value stored behind the scenes. My Stories also gets the view count it displays from the same listing, so the view count in My Stories is also not showing the most up-to-date count: it is also the cached value. This is why you may check back in ArcGIS Online My Content or My Stories and not see any change at all in the view count for your story map, even though everyone loves it and it is pretty much going viral on Twitter 
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To see the most recent, dynamic view count you should go to the Item Details page for your story map in ArcGIS, e,g. https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=d1ef0471365e400ebb540472b477871e and look at the view count on the Overview tab on that page. If you are the owner of the item you'll also see a Usage tab that lets you see the views in graph form. To get to the Item Details page from an ArcGIS Online listing, like My Content or search results, click on the title of the item. You currently can't get to the Item Details page for a story map directly from My Stories but that's something we would like to add, not the least because of this issue.
The cached view count that you see in the ArcGIS Online and My Stories listings does get updated with the most recent count occasionally. It happens if you make an edit to the item details metadata (like adding a thumbnail, brief summary and tags - which you should all be doing for your stories to make them look their best in social media and search) either directly in ArcGIS or via My Stories, or if you make an edit to the story itself. It also happens if you or someone else leaves a star rating or a comment on the item details page, which can only be done directly in ArcGIS. So one of these things probably explains why one of your view counts suddenly jumped up after not moving for sometime: either you edited the story map or its item details, or someone in ArcGIS rated it or left a comment.
So to get the latest view count for a story, open its item details page. And if you want the cached value in ArcGIS Online to be updated to reflect the latest value - for example if you want your colleagues or group members to be impressed when they see your story map and its high view count in listings - then do one of the things above. For example if I am mining ArcGIS Online to find, say, the publicly shared story map about Los Angeles that has the most views: https://www.arcgis.com/home/search.html?q=story%20maps%20los%20angeles&t=content&start=1&sortOrder=d... I will usually open the item details pages for the ones at the top of the listing to see the latest counts.
We would like to improve this so that you always see the most up-to-date value but the above is my best understanding of how it currently works.
Rupert
