PyPi download counts seem unrealistic

Question

I put a package on PyPi for the first time ~2 months ago, and have made some version updates since then. I noticed this week the download count recording, and was surprised to s

Answer 1

You also have to take into account that virtualenv is getting more popular. If your package is something like a core library that people use in many of their projects, they will usually download it multiple times.

Consider a single user has 5 projects where he uses your package and each lives in its own virtualenv. Using pip to meet the requirements, your package is already downloaded 5 times this way. Then these projects might be set up on different machines, like work, home and laptop computers, in addition there might be a staging and a live server in case of a web application. Summing this up, you end up with many downloads by a single person.

Just a thought... perhaps your package is simply good. ;)