Good questions:
1. A view for an app, like a Story Map, or a map, like the map(s) in a app, gets counted when that app or map is loaded into a web browser. It gets counted whether or not the app or map is full-screen or embedded in a web page. So if a web page contains an embedded Story Map, that Story Map's view count increments by 1 as soon as someone opens that web page, because the Story Map gets loaded as part of that web page. This is why the most viewed story maps tend to be ones that are embedded in web pages: as you might expect, in general readers discover and land on those contextual pages more than they do on standalone maps and apps.I believe the view count for a web map inside an app only gets incremented when that map is actually displayed in the Story Map. So in a Story Map Journal containing several web maps, if a reader stops reading the story halfway through, they only increment hits on the maps that they viewed.
A view is also registered for maps, apps and other content if someone goes into ArcGIS Online, find that item and then opens its item details page (i.e. the page you can use to view info and other metadata about an item). This only contributes a few hits, because most of your readers aren't doing that. For example here is the item page for the most viewed Story Map I can find in ArcGIS Online: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=ef6f11c8c36b42c29e103f65dbcd7538 . Launching that story map from that page increments the view count, but so does opening that page.
2. If someone opens a web map and then clicks on features to get info about them, I believe that only registers one view, when the map is initially loaded.
3. We don't support those fine grained analytics but folks are asking for them, especially for Story Maps. It is possible to add Google Analytics into Story Maps that you self-host. See this blog post: https://community.esri.com/community/gis/web-gis/storymaps/blog/2016/06/07/story-maps-developers-cor...
Tip: In ArcGIS Online to see the most up-to-date view count for any content, you should open its item details page. If you just look at the view count in the ArcGIS Online item listing (i.e. search results, group listing or in My Contents), you are looking at a cached view count, not the live view count.
For example here's a highly viewed Story Map:
https://www.arcgis.com/home/search.html?q=%20Kitchener%20Plow%20Clearing%20Priorities%20Story%20Map&...
but to see its actual view count, you have to click on its title in that listing to open its item details page:
https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=6c7941dd02544ad7bf959d3947cbab54
On that page, the view count will usually be larger than the one shown in the item listing because it is the most recent view count.
The cached view count shown in the ArcGIS Online item listing gets updated whenever the author edits the item, or edits the info on the item details page. It also gets updated if someone rates the item or leaves a comment. So in the example I posted above, if the view count in the item listing is the same as the view count on the item details, it means that one of those actions happened recently that updated the cached view count. You can try that yourself now if you are signed into to ArcGIS Online. If you open that story map's item details page and rate the story map, and then go back to the item listing, you'll have updated that cached view count.
Rupert
