RE: UKNM: Usage statistics - the truth?

[Piers Beckley]

> Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 11:40:39 GMT

>

From: "Bob Smith" <bbob909hotmail [dot] com>

> Subject: UKNM: Usage statistics - the truth?

>

> Looking through the archive there are lots of programs that

> can analyse our

> log files and give us a summary. However, how do people

> actually find out

> the number of unique visitors to their sites? We can see

> sessions, but it

> seems that some ISP visitors create dozens of sessions each

> time they come,

> such as Freeserve and AOL, which surely skews the results?

> I've seen reports

> of sites that say how many unique visitors they get per month

> but they must

> be using something other than analysing their log files.



Sam - is it worth putting a FAQ together for UKNM? This is one of those

questions that keep coming up... (along with "How do I improve my ratings on

Search Engines?").


[Sam says: funny you should mention it, expect the first of the FAQs in

approx. 2 weeks time....]


Here's a repost of the answer from last time...


A Page Impression = A Thing Specifically Requested

--------------------------------------------------


So if I'm on a website, I click a link, and get an HTML page with 20 images

on it and an annoying ever-repeating soundfile, that's one PI. If on that

page is a link to one image on its own and I click on that, that's one PI.

Alternatively, if I clicked on a link and got a soundfile, that's one PI. If

I get a frameset containing 12 HTML pages, that's one PI.


Seems easy enough. So how do you measure the little buggers?


The simplest way is to filter out everything that's not explicitly a single

thing. So never allow users to click on a link and receive a "raw" jpeg, or

gif, or whatever-the-hell-the-latest-plugin-is - always embed it in an HTML

page. Then ask your technical people to write a filter program in perl for

your logfiles to throw away jpeg/gif/png/plugin requests. They'll be able to

do it in a morning and have plenty of time before lunch to surf slashdot for

cool things.


Don't use frames on your site. They suck anyway.


A Unique User = No Such Thing

-----------------------------


Server logs are wonderful things. They can tell you all sorts of useful

information. But unless you subscribe to a PC-metering panel, YOU CANNOT

MEASURE UNIQUE USERS FROM SERVER LOGS! Live with it.


If you feel you need a proxy for users you can measure Unique Hosts, which

are the computers that request data from your server. But they have no

measurable relationship to Unique Users, due to the fact that they could be


o a firewall machine

o an request from an AOL browser


ABC//electronic will allow you to claim a unique IP address cross-referenced

with a browser string as a unique user. If you need this information to sell

ads, by all means claim it. But don't fall into the trap of believing that

it measures anything useful.


Besides which, you'd be better off using cookies, as this is also accepted

by ABC as a measure for UUs and make your adsales dept. happier.


But that's not real data either.


Enforcement

-----------


When ABC//electronic come to do an audit they will check that


o you're not counting as PIs things like frames, pictures in pages etc.

o whatever you're claiming in unique users is justified according to the

rules that you've chosen to measure UUs with


They do this by checking random sessions of your logs for the month in

question, compared with your output figures.


Sessions & Clickthroughs

------------------------


Don't even start me on this one. Just Say No.


Piers


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