Read-through funnel
The report that shows how far readers get before they stop.
The read-through funnel measures reader persistence by showing, for each page, the share of reading sessions that reached at least that page. A flat curve means readers stay engaged throughout. A sharp drop signals a specific page where engagement falls off, so you can identify which content needs revision.
Its unit is the session, not the reader: someone who opens the document three times contributes three sessions to the funnel, each counted at the deepest page that session reached.
How to read the funnel
The funnel displays a horizontal bar for each page. Long documents are sampled to at most 30 evenly spaced steps, with the final page always appended so completion stays visible. The bar's width is the percentage of all sessions on the document that reached at least that page.
The denominator is every session, including sessions that reported no page activity at all. Those count toward the total but reach nothing, so they pull every bar down.
A sharp cliff on one page—where the percentage suddenly drops—indicates that specific page caused readers to stop. This might be a dense section, a tone shift, or simply the point where they found what they needed. Recurring cliffs across multiple files suggest a pattern worth addressing.
A gentle decline across all pages indicates readers are gradually finishing the document but not abandoning it at any one spot. This is typical of longer materials where attrition is natural.
A plateau near 100% through the later pages means nearly everyone who started continued all the way to the end—a strong engagement signal.
When no session has reached a page yet, the bar shows 0%.
The funnel needs a known page count to draw at all. That count is reported by the viewer when a reading session ends, so a document nobody has finished a session on yet shows no read-through data rather than an empty chart.
Completion rate
Your summary also displays a completion rate: the percentage of sessions that reached the document's final page. It shares the funnel's denominator — every session on the file — so a completion rate of 60% means 60% of reading sessions ran to the last page.
How ranges affect the funnel
When you share a page-range link, the recipient receives a trimmed document and their viewer numbers it from 1. Share pages 5–15 and the recipient reports pages 1 through 11: the page numbers recorded are positions in the excerpt, not in the source document.
Recipients of a ranged link also never write the document's total page count. A reader of an 11-page excerpt cannot shrink a 100-page document's stored count — only you and readers of the full document report it.
The consequence is that the funnel's axis stays the full document while a ranged recipient's deepest page can never exceed the window's size. A recipient who read the whole excerpt registers as having reached page 11 of 100 and does not count toward the completion rate, which is measured against the document's final page rather than the window's. Read the funnel for a ranged link within the window: the first bars are the real drop-off, and the cliff immediately after them is the range boundary, not abandonment.
When a range is active, the readership API response carries an effectivePages field — the size of the shared window, clamped to the known page count — so an API consumer can label the funnel with the context. The readership page does not currently render a label from it.
Basic and above
The read-through funnel is available on the Basic plan and higher, and so is the completion rate that shares its denominator. Free-tier accounts see only the summary cards — total views, unique visitors, average time, countries and downloads. See plans and limits for the full feature breakdown.