Following up on some recent posts that made little sense...
Web usage statistics, such as those produced by programs such as analog cannot be used to make strong inferences about the number of people who have read a website or webpage. Although those who compile these statistics usually try to make this clear, people still insist on misusing them to make overly strong inferences. Attaching meaning to meaningless numbers is worse than not having the numbers at all. When you lack information, it is best to know that you lack the information. Web statistics may give the user a false sense of knowledge which can be worse than being knowingly ignorant.A useful analogy is with putting up advertising posters. You will never really know how many people have noticed them or read them.It is not enough to say that the statistics should be taken with a grain of salt; they should be taken with a salt lick. If you want to understand why no inference about the number of people reading your pages can be made from web statistics read on. Otherwise, you may wish to just trust that statement or may wish to skip to the section on Quick Questions and Answers. What web stats are really good for? --------------------------------------------- Web stats are useful for web administrators to get a sense of the actual load on the server. This is useful for diagnostics and planning, and for detecting unusual behaviour that may require planning action. The goal of the administrator is to keep the server running smoothly under expected loads, while improving the speed and reliability of obtaining documents from the site. The best way to achieve this is to have browsers retrieve documents from places closer to where they will be used (and even from memory) than to get them from the disk on the server. It is only when the file is retrieved from the server that the server has the ability to keep track of the access. Rest at: http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/webstats/ ************************************************************************ * ==> QUICK LIST-COMMAND REFERENCE - Put the following commands in <== * ==> the body of an email & send 'em to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <== * Join the list: SUBSCRIBE COMPUTERGUYS-L Your Name * Too much mail? Try Daily Digests command: SET COMPUTERGUYS-L DIGEST * Tired of the List? Unsubscribe command: SIGNOFF COMPUTERGUYS-L * New address? From OLD address send: CHANGE COMPUTERGUYS-L YourNewAddress * Need more help? Send mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************************ * List archive at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ * RSS at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml * Messages bearing the header "X-No-Archive: yes" will not be archived ************************************************************************
