Shifting Marketing Success From Page Views to Visitation

The Challenge: Exposure Metrics vs. Visitation Impact

Visit York County had no shortage of marketing data. But it lacked a metric to answer the most important question: Are the efforts driving visitation? For years, reporting centered on page views, follower counts, and impressions. As AI-driven changes to search behavior pulled organic website traffic down, those measures became an even weaker signal of real interest.

The team adopted the Website Impact Calculator to evaluate campaigns and content based on visitation rather than exposure alone. By ranking performance on visits per 1,000 impressions, they could separate high-volume activity from high-efficiency results. That analysis surfaced YoCo Taste Trail Week, the county’s annual culinary celebration, as a clear standout.

What They Found

YoCo Taste Trail emerged as the most efficient campaign of the fiscal year, generating 132.2 visits per 1,000 impressions, or 3.8x the sitewide average. The findings confirmed the event’s value and gave the team confidence to bring it back in 2026 with the same budget and new ways to validate restaurant-level visitation.

The 2026 event delivered. The Taste Trail page drew more impressions and visits than any other page on the site, up from third the year before. And the impact reached well beyond one campaign: the data helped Visit York County make influenced visits its primary KPI and supported advocacy for an increase in the Destination Marketing Fee from 2% to 3%.