Misleading site visit counters? Web trawlers / Bots / Google Cache

L[Deactivated] on 10/06/2014 - 12:57

Hi All,

Had an interesting conversation the other day with a colleague around Site Visit/Click Counters. I suspect that a visit counter is largely effected by site scanners/web trawlers i.e. Google cache. So I pose the question to those more educated in this area than I:

  1. Is it possible for these cache/search utilities to increase web traffic and skew the site counter?
  2. Is there a difference between a site click counter and a visit counter? (Ozbargain call it 'clicks')

Google didn't help me out much, I think I might have some terminology wrong

Internet

Comments

  • phamid on 10/06/2014 - 13:01

    I'm sure you can have counters that don't count crawlers/spiders.

    Stackoverflow is your friend:

    http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17515381/exclude-bots-and…

  • Sage on 10/06/2014 - 13:23
    +2

    site counters? what year is it, 1996?
    Anyway I don't think search engines automatically add to counters. and yes clicks and views are the same thing.

    • cuteseal on 10/06/2014 - 14:25

      Haha I remember putting counters on my geocities web pages…

      • [Deactivated] on 10/06/2014 - 15:40

        It's for my angelfire account… not really, it was a carsales ad (see below comment). They use this information as a representation of their excellent service and exposure, when based on the feedback Scotty has kindly provided, it could be very misleading.

  • scotty on 10/06/2014 - 14:07
    +1

    A lot of times it depends on how you "measure" a click or a visit. There are usually two methods:

    1. From the web server logs. This would include all the HTTP requests, including actual human, bots, scrappers, etc. Most log analytic software would be able to distinguish between users and bots, if the user-agent of the request has been specified correctly (which is usually NOT the case).

    2. From browser-side scripts, which is usually a Javascript that's invoked from the browser. For example Google Analytics. Page views logged here are usually actual browsers rendering the page and executing the code. However it would not catch visitors who have Javascript turned off or blocked.

    Usually (1) would over-estimate the actual visitors, and (2) would slightly under-estimate it.

    Now I guess you are about OzBargain's "click counter" on the deals. It is triggered and increased whenever you click through the "Go to Deal" or the thumbnail to visit a deal, on the server side. Therefore a bot going to the same URL (usually /goto/123456 on OzBargain) would also increase the count, but would not necessarily increase the page view on the merchant's website.

    The URL is blocked by robots.txt on OzBargain though so most behaving bots should not increase the click count here.

    • [Deactivated] on 10/06/2014 - 15:39

      Thanks Scotty,
      It was actually around my friends Carsales ad, because she receives an email with an analysis of 'weekly/daily visits'. It has had around 4 visits per day with no enquiries over a couple of months. I was more curious on if the data was correct than actually selling the car so didn't mention it. Just reread your post and it makes a lot of sense now : )

      • scotty on 10/06/2014 - 21:25

        4 visits a day on a page is actually not a lot. Just take retail for example. How many people walk pass a shop before coming in to check out the product?

        • [Deactivated] on 10/06/2014 - 22:22

          These are 4 detailed views on the actual ad page, so essentially 4 "people" per day checking out the product

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