On 7/20/99 1:13 PM Aengus Lawlor ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
>The basic issue is that standard web logs can not be relied upon to
>provide reliable "session" information, for a whole host of reasons, not
>least of which is that different users will have very different
>environments, and it's a mistake to assume that a generic tool can take
>account of these differences - a site with a lot of corporate users
>coming through firewalls/proxy server will have a different set of
>issues than a site with a lot of home users dialing in to various ISPs,
>and there will be a different set of issues again for high bandwidth
>sites targetted at the cable network audience.
>
>If you come up with a definition for the term "session" that satisfies
>your needs, you can come up with session counts fairly easily - but you
>can also be very certain that your definition won't find widespread
>acceptance, because other people are working under different
>constraints. In your case, your session is defined by a unique URL that
>you bounce each user to - this isn't an option for most other sites.
The Internet Advertising Board <http://www.iab.net/> has worked on this
issue quite a bit. They have a definition of a visit which is esentialy a
"session" as you are using it. Their methodology refects the fact that
you can't make any hard corespondence between their visits and "real"
user visits, but they feel that there should be a standard definition for
purposes of comparing one site with another.
Many log analysis tools impliment the IAB definition of a visit. While it
doesn't acurately refect any specific human activity, it is very useful
and well defined. Comparing visits at one site to visits at another site
or to visits during a different period of time can be meaningful, even if
we still have no idea exactly what the absolute numbers mean.
Jason
Jason
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[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Dr. Seuss books . . . can be read and enjoyed on several levels. For
example, 'One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish' can be deconstructed
as a searing indictment of the narrow-minded binary counting system.
-- Peter van der Linden, Expert C Programming, Deep C Secrets
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