Need a site counter

December 1, 2004 11:21 AM

I'm not in the technology business, so this may seem like a fairly simple-minded question. I've a client who claims their website receives a certain number of visitors (not hits, unique visitors) a month. Is there a way to validate this - a non-illegal/non-hacking way of counting what interest one website may generate without them knowing it? Perhaps a website like google or the like that provides this service?
posted by eatdonuts to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

I can't imagine any way you could do this without access to the logs. The logs are the only reliable source of this information and they are going to be above the web root.

If it's a client maybe you could get FTP access and scoop up the logs? At that point it's trivial to parse them.
posted by cedar at 11:33 AM on December 1, 2004

You can get the traffic rank from Alexa if its a popular website.

Here's Metafilter.
posted by vacapinta at 11:39 AM on December 1, 2004

Large sites subscribe to services that independently verify these numbers (like Jupiter/MediaMetrix). If they're not in that league, there's no way to know without access to the logs. It's the same as if he/she claimed a certain level of revenue- you can't verify without seeing the books.
posted by mkultra at 11:40 AM on December 1, 2004

Try going to their domain.com/stats.
posted by smackfu at 12:01 PM on December 1, 2004

every log analyzer will give you slightly different results. Because of browser cache-ing and other factors, not all visits are logged. Nor are they processed the same way by different programs.

If you use WebTrends, SiteCatalyst, AWStats and HitBox concurrently (for example), you would soon see that there is a slight variation in your site's hits, visits and uniques.

It's an inexact science at best - even more so if you have a very popular site.
posted by seawallrunner at 12:45 PM on December 1, 2004

from what I have gathered, alexa.com and ranking.com are great for popularity rankings, in other words for ranking the sites as compared to other sites. But in terms of measuring actual visitors/page views, they're usually way off.
posted by chaz at 4:09 PM on December 1, 2004

Alexa doesn't really tell you much about sites that aren't in the top 10,000. It depends on people who have the Alexa bar installed, so below a certain level, 1 sample plus or minus can send your position flying all over the place.

Plus, a disproportionate chunk of Alexa bar users are in S. Korea. This skews things a little as well.
posted by 4easypayments at 5:22 PM on December 1, 2004