Heather McDonald wrote:
>Analog shows the total number of unique hosts in any given log file. My
>problem is that our logs file spans a whole month and I wanted to
>'guess' the number of visitors to my site. Is there any way I can set
>up
>
>Analog to treat the IP as a new IP every 3 hours or so? I checked the
>mailing list but the only way I found was to run the reports for that
>particular period. I cannot run 3x8x30 reports in a month. If I did
>run individual daily reports, then when I needed weekly and monthly
>reports the results would not total the unique hosts the same. There
>has to be another way. Someone please help.
As long as you understand that it's only a guess anyway, just do the
hard work for some sample daily logs and come up with a multiplier that
reflects the traffic patterns at your site, and then just apply it to
your future logs.
Note that if you get much traffic from any ISP that uses a proxy
server, you are likely to find the proxy servers IP address in your log
file constantly, whether there are 10 people from that ISP visiting
your site through the day or 10,000. On the other hand if the ISP uses
a large bank of proxy servers, a single "visitor" may show up with a
number of different IP addresses in a single "visit". And if it's a
caching proxy server, you may be getting "visitors" who never reach
your log files at all.
Any implications you draw from such guesswork is not worth the time it
takes to make them. IP addresses just don't represent what you are
trying to measure. Short of using a cookie, there is no way to identify
an individual visitor (and cookies aren't exactly foolproof in this
respect either).
Aengus
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