When I survey eBay, I'll typically "watch" chips that I'm interested in -- for later bidding, or simply to monitor sales & prices, etc.

Some listings may include a counter near the bottom of the page.
Question: is this counter showing how may different ebay users have opened that webpage? (Not necessarily "watchers", but just unique viewers?) Or ... if a single user (say, me) opens the page 5 different times over the course of the listing, does the counter count that as 5 page viewings, or just a single count?

On a related note, the watchcount.com website lets you check (a) how many ebay users have viewed an item, and (b) how many have marked an item in their "watch" listings. How does this website get their info? Seems like the watch count is known only to ebay, and made available to the item's seller. How does a 3rd-party website get access to this information? Are they hacking into ebay information somehow, or is it publicly available in a way that's not apparent to me?