Nik, Len, and all, Great point re: effects of different tools' filtering efficacy on the traffic they report. Last year our main analysis tool changed over from a leading web analytics product* to AWStats. For one illustrative month of overlap, reports derived from the same raw Apache log files suddenly showed 23% fewer unique visitors, 45% fewer visits (!), 28% fewer page views, and 16% fewer hits--that most useless, if biggest, of metrics.
So, by concrete anecdote: different tools can produce apples and oranges (and uneasy feelings about past metrics formerly cited in public...). Rob *one which rhymes, kind of, with "deep end" or "head spins" Nik Honeysett wrote: > We attempted to do this at one point, but found it to be a real challenge. > Aside from issues like every metrics software having a different notion of > what constitutes a visit, we found that some institutions either didn't or > didn't want to filter out unwanted traffic such as bots and spiders, which > are significant numbers. In the pursuit of accuracy, we went through one > significant upgrade of our metrics software NetGenesis (web log processing) > and recently switched to Omniture (page tagging). Both changes resulted in > decreases in our traffic due to improvements in filtering. We previously > concluded that the only way to accurately benchmark with others, was for all > to use a centralized system like this and match all parameters. So, good luck > with that... > > -nik > > Nik Honeysett > Head of Administration > J. Paul Getty Museum > tel: 310-440-7346 > fax: 310-440-7751 > nhoneysett at getty.edu > >>>> "Leonard Steinbach" <lensteinbach at gmail.com> 3/11/2008 10:26 AM >>> > I was wondering whether anyone uses any particular web traffic statistics to > compare the performance of their website to the websites of other museums. > In effect is anyone benchmarking their website against others, or know of > any studies or papers which address this issue? > > Thanks ______________________________________________ Rob Lancefield (rlancefield [at] wesleyan.edu) Manager of Museum Information Services / Registrar of Collections Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University 301 High Street, Middletown CT 06459-0487 USA 860.685.2965 Vice President / President-Elect, Museum Computer Network (MCN)
