Hi Jami. In my experience, managers are eager for "unique visitor" numbers because many of the expensive logfile analysis applications DO provide a figure for this category, and as a result many sites make "user" claims in their advertising rate cards and promotional material.
It's a total conceit, however; most of these "user" reports are simply counts of unique IPs. What I would suggest (which seems to have worked all right for me), is that you take a little time to explain to the head of this web site exactly why counting IPs as "users" is a bad idea, and exactly why it results in misleading and inaccurate conclusions about site traffic. Then I would offer to provide the results of the Analog host report, which does count IPs, so he/she at least has a figure to compare with competitors' figures. Just make sure he/she has a clear understanding of what the IP count really means. Others on this list may disagree with this approach, but my feeling is that it's okay to use IP counts to get a vague sense of the breadth of your audience (and its up/down trends), so long as you're very clear that one IP does not equal one person. Anyone else have thoughts? -----Original Message----- From: Jami Ryan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 11:35 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [analog-help] Another User Report Question I know this is probably a dumb question, but I've been instructed to ask it. In regards to the user report and allowing it to "cheat" and use cookies instead of authenticated users, what happens if a log file line doesn't contain a cookie? My guess is that Analog ignores it and only counts those lines which do have cookies in them and only includes these lines in it's not listed users total. Is this a correct assumption? Also, having read over your help files and web site, I know that is impossible to count unique visitors and am aware that analog does not do this. The problem I am having is the head of the web site I'm working on wants a figure for unique visitors regardless if it is impossible or not. And, unfortunately, in another web site he is in charge of, it used Analog's user report as a way to count unique visitors. He now is looking to do the same thing on his new site. Which leads to my second question, in using cookies instead of authenticated users for the user report, is there a danger in allowing him to continue to use the figure of users not listed as the number of "unique" visitors to his site? Thank you so much for all your help in advance. ************************** Jami Ryan Web Developer Automation Creations, Inc. http://www.aciwebs.com +------------------------------------------------------------------------ | This is the analog-help mailing list. To unsubscribe from this | mailing list, go to | http://lists.isite.net/listgate/analog-help/unsubscribe.html | | List archives are available at | http://www.mail-archive.com/analog-help@lists.isite.net/ | http://lists.isite.net/listgate/analog-help/archives/ | http://www.tallylist.com/archives/index.cfm/mlist.7 +------------------------------------------------------------------------ +------------------------------------------------------------------------ | This is the analog-help mailing list. To unsubscribe from this | mailing list, go to | http://lists.isite.net/listgate/analog-help/unsubscribe.html | | List archives are available at | http://www.mail-archive.com/analog-help@lists.isite.net/ | http://lists.isite.net/listgate/analog-help/archives/ | http://www.tallylist.com/archives/index.cfm/mlist.7 +------------------------------------------------------------------------
