topic Re: Vector tile layer usage statistics in ArcGIS Online Questions

Vector tile layer usage statistics

RossFindlayCOC — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:53:07 GMT

I am trying to administer a number of vector tile styles in our organization. Part of that admin is to weed out some of the lesser used styles to deduce our work load in supporting so many. I am able to get the usage statistics on the actual hosted tile layer, however style files don't seem to return usage stats. So how can I find out the magnitude of usage of a style across our organization? I tried using the Python API to first find all web maps that reference a style files itemid, and then pass those webmaps to a usage query for the past year. This gave me some results however, the API also started to reject my requests as there were too many. So I can't use this method to get a comprehensive result, even after breaking down the list to just those that are public (52 maps of 1600). Any ideas are welcome.

Re: Vector tile layer usage statistics

ZaraMatheson — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:10:37 GMT

Hello,

You should be able to get some statistics if you look at the view counts on the item itself rather than the style file. I'm able to see the view count specific to my Vector tile styles on the item details page for that style.

If you are the org admin, you can also run the Item report for the organization and that will include the view counts by item and will include the counts for Vector Tile style items.

Will that work?

Re: Vector tile layer usage statistics

RossFindlayCOC — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:08:59 GMT

Thanks for your reply. I took a look at the report option, and the numbers don't really jive. If our Organization has 4 custom vector basemap styles, all built on the same tile set that we mandate all web maps must use then I would expect that these would be the most viewed/ utilized items in the whole of the Organization.

Some math: If I have 10 maps and 2 are public and they use style file #1 and have 2 million views in 3 months, and the other 8 are internal to the org and use style file #2 and have 200K views in 3 months, then I would expect to see the view counts to reflect that, but this is not the case. our hosted tile set for those styles has a count of 42 even though we have had millions of views of our content. The style files have even less.I suspect that number is the number of times someone has gone to the item page, which is not the metric I am looking for.

I even took a look at the count the basemap web map items were viewed and that also didn't come close to adding up to the total viewed for the quarter for all other web map/ web app items. While it was elevated relative to the vector tile style layers, it is my suspicion that that is because a "view" is triggered when the basemap switcher is triggered or loaded and the REST API needs to call in the new basemap object. But that is just a hypothesis.

In the end I don't think this is a metric that is possible, although would be valuable in allowing us to see the utilization of our basemaps and also compliance on our internal standards.

Thanks for your time.

Re: Vector tile layer usage statistics

ZaraMatheson — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 19:15:30 GMT

Thanks for the details. Agreed that there may not be a perfect way to get exactly the metric you are looking for. You could try opening a ticket with support to take a deeper dive and see if they have any additional recommendations.