May 23, 2002
“UNIQUE” HITS: Reader Steve Furlong says my counter is understating the traffic:
The “unique visitors” counter is only an approximation of the actual unique visitors you get. It almost certainly counts distinct IP addresses. This doesn’t quite map to distinct end-user computers because of IP masking, Network Address Translation (NAT) and a couple of other things. Stripping the jargon, AOL and other large ISPs and most largish companies are assigned blocks of IP addresses. Smaller sites might have just a single address but support multiple users with internal routers.
A user visiting you from one of those sites will seem to you to have one of the IP addresses in that block; if he visits again he might have the same or a different apparent address. And someone else visiting your page from one of those systems might be assigned the same address.
Two concrete examples, showing each of these distorting factors:
- My web server’s log sometimes shows someone visiting some of my pages. It’s clearly the same person visiting successive pages, but he might show six different IP addresses for ten hits in five minutes. (My site normally gets a few hundred hits per *week*, discounting the robots, so I can examine the logs in detail if I wish.)
- My small home network connects to the internet with a DSL line with a static address. I have a router to support up to four simultaneous connections, but they all appear to be the same address so far as the world is concerned.
You might well know all this, but I find it’s better not to assume that people in other fields know the stuff in my field of work, and to “waste” the time explaining.
Yes, I’m familiar with this stuff, though many readers may not be. And my counter’s worse yet, because it only counts visitors to the main page — links to individual posts go elsewhere and don’t get counted. But nonetheless it’s shown more unique visitors than I expected, so it’s taught me something. And by making it available, I want to undermine those people who have occasionally implied that bloggers lie about their traffic. I’d like to see some “mainstream” sites provide similar information in a similar fashion, but I doubt that will happen.
Comments are enabled on this one. What do you think?
Stephen Green says:
Glenn, try putting your hit counter HTML in your archive page template. Then, anyone clicking directly to a post will trip the meter.
The drawback is, if they then click to your main page, they’d get counted a second time.
But who knows — that might do no more than to make up for the hits “lost” by ISPs like AOL.
May 23, 2002, 5:20 pmGlenn Reynolds says:
Oh, come on Stephen. If it were that easy, as you must know, Stacy would have done it already. Extreme tracker doesn’t permit that. But she’s working on some sort of fancy php script that’ll count all the hits and display total pageviews and unique visitors.
May 23, 2002, 5:32 pmJohn Griffin Jr. says:
A more accurate way to measure unique hits would be accomplished through cookies. If you go that route, I’d be interested in learning what fraction of your readership reacts against it, out of privacy concerns. JG
May 23, 2002, 5:33 pmStephen Green says:
Those Extreme Tracker guys are tight, eh? Well, that’s how I solved my problem, but I’m still using lame-ass SiteMeter.
May 23, 2002, 5:40 pmWill Vehrs says:
Glenn, all this techno-jargon about hit numbers and the understandable desire to prove to the mainstream Doubting Thomases that your counts are accurate or even understated is really beside the point.
Those of us who have been with you from the beginning were inspired by the content and it’s the content that keeps us coming back. We’re glad you’ve been fabulously successful with your model and have attracted a huge following, but don’t “sell out” to a numbers game while you’re still doing this for the love of it.
Keep something pure in this media world pure for as long as you can. And keep the content coming. The “Thomases” only undermine their own credibility by disparaging you.
May 23, 2002, 5:54 pmGlenn Reynolds says:
Thanks Will. What you’re saying means a lot, and just because I dropped a cool hundred bucks (!) on a site redesign doesn’t mean that I have some big fancy plans. I don’t.
I don’t think the numbers mean all that much, really, and as I’ve written, I’d just as soon have somebody who likes the site so much that they refresh 10 times as 10 people who check once a day. Advertisers might feel differently, but I don’t have advertisers. But those comments by John Scalzi still rankle, and besides, I’m a big believer in transparency, so I thought I’d open this up for a while. My honor has been touched, and dueling is out of style. So it’s web counters at 56kbps instead of pistols at 20 paces. Or something like that.
May 23, 2002, 6:06 pmPaul Musgrave says:
The debate may be picayune to some of your readers, but to the editorial staff (both of us) at the Hoosier Review (http://www.hoosierreview.com) it’s a fairly major issue. How do we sell advertisements if we can’t provide circulation figures to potential ad-buyers? The issue of IP undercounting is a serious one for us, because as Richard Bennett learned when he launched an attack on an HR staffer, most of our readers are on the same network. Thanks for this information, by the way; it’s helped clear up a lot of issues.
May 23, 2002, 6:14 pmMichael Levy says:
You can always have more than one counter on your page.
You could get a Site Meter counter, and stick that on all of your pages, in addition to the one from BraveNet.
Are these comments boxes eventually going to be appended to every post? Because I’d love to be able to link on your page when I’ve added something to what you’ve posted (in this case, I’ve dug up an incident from 2 years ago where Mexican soldiers attacked Border Patrol agents, which was similar in some ways to the current one)
May 23, 2002, 6:37 pmWill Allen says:
Hey, I’m usually a lousy judge as to what will achieve broad popularity, but in my estimation Instapundit is about the best source for accessing intelligent, divergent viewpoints, so I wouldn’t be suprised if the unique visitors number is low. Cass Sunstein may disagree, but Instapundit provides a great public service. Thanks, and keep it up, as long as your having fun.
May 23, 2002, 6:39 pmThe Dodd says:
My experience is that eXtreme Tracking undercounts anyway. Habing tracked my pages with it and two others simultaneously for an extended period, eXtreme rarely counted more than 1/4 of the individually identified hits that Sitemeter caught (and, since Sitemeter gives me IP addresses and separates out Visits from Page Views, I know it’s not just recounting the same people).
May 23, 2002, 6:42 pmBill Quick says:
I just contracted to have Stacy redo DailyPundit. All the cool kids are jumping on, I see. I didn’t know you could set up comments via individual posts, though. That is an excellent wrinkle.
May 23, 2002, 7:04 pmKevin M. McGehee says:
What I want to know is, how much daily traffic will I need to be able to show to get some advertising? If anyone knows what kind of traffic advertisers look for, I’d be grateful.
Not that I’m anywhere near that level now, I’m sure…
May 23, 2002, 7:19 pmMyria says:
Short of going to cookies, which would be problematic for any number of reasons, there’s really no way to get anything resembling an accurate count so it’s not really worth worrying about too much.
No matter how much you try I doubt any number you could come up with would satisfy the nattering naybobs of Blogtopian negativity, so, to paraphrase the bard, may they perform anatomically impossible sexual acts upon themselves if they cannot abide amusement.
Myria
May 23, 2002, 7:32 pmDave Roberts says:
We get about 100,000 page views a month that we track using web log analysis software(webtrends) hosted by our ISP. We still have some ISP undercount issues, but the overall detail we get about visitors more than makes up for those issues. The graphics about time of day, state, and national origin are fascinating. I can tell you that very few Saudi Arabians like visiting dog web sites. From another site I manage I can tell you that Penn State students are the most interested in flirting…
Jump past the page counters and get into log analysis software if you are serious about traffic numbers that you can share with advertisers. If you’re really curious, send me an email and I’ll give you a link to the stats so you can what they look like.
Dave
May 23, 2002, 7:50 pmDave Roberts says:
Oops, I forgot comments wouldn’t include a usable email dave@sonoma.net
May 23, 2002, 7:53 pmPatrick Philips says:
I won’t venture into the deep network/web stuff, but I feel I should point out that I routinely check your site from both my work computer and my home computer — which means you’re getting two unique hits from me every day. On days when I’m teaching evening classes, it’s not unusual for me to check your site on my office computer, my home computer, and a classroom computer.
Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of your readers do the home computer/work computer thing. So (please forgive me for the dash of cold water) it’s possible that your readership is actually smaller than your unique hit counts indicate.
May 23, 2002, 7:58 pmKevin M. McGehee says:
Log analysis software, eh? Shoot, I’m still getting used to the level of detail I’m getting from Extreme Tracker. Like I said, though, I’m still a long way from the point of being able to attract advertisers — I’m in my first full calendar day with this tracker and it might — MIGHT — break 100 by midnight EDT. Just looking way, way, WAY ahead, is all.
May 23, 2002, 7:59 pmKevin Shay says:
Cookies aren’t really a better solution, just a different solution. Some users have cookies turned off either entirely or selectively; others (like me) delete their cookies regularly; some people run multiple browsers on a single computer; computers in cafes, university computer labs, etc., may have multiple users under the same set of cookies. And don’t forget that someone who accesses your site as instapundit.com and then as http://www.instapundit.com and then as 64.247.33.250 will get three different cookies unless you code around this.
Still, even with the dumbest hit-counting methods, the web gives you an infinitely better idea of how many people are laying eyes on your writing, or your ad, than any other publishing or broadcast medium. People, especially advertisers, tend to forget this.
May 23, 2002, 8:10 pmSekimori says:
Stephen, Glenn, and anyone else who is using Host Matters: your Control Panel stats are among the most comprehensive you can get. Check them out at http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel
May 23, 2002, 8:23 pmGlenn Reynolds says:
Yeah, the log analysis software is detailed, though kind of daunting. And it’s not as up to date: it shows “last updated” as 3:46 a.m. today.
On the other hand, it shows a good deal more traffic for yesterday than does the Extreme Tracker — which makes sense, sense it counts all the pages, not just the front page.
May 23, 2002, 8:51 pmBobby Allison-Gallimore says:
Another factor to keep in mind is that some readers, myself included, may have InstaPundit set as their browser homepage, resulting in a hit for InstaPundit any time they open a new browser window, connect to the Internet, etc, although they may not intend to read InstaPundit at all. (Although in self-defense, I, for one, check the page almost every time I perform one of the above actions, which is why I set it as my home page in the first place. :-) )
May 23, 2002, 8:56 pmJ S Allison says:
Since I stumbled across this joint I’ve found that I’ll pass through numerous times during the day, in part to see what your inimitableness has posted lately, and also to hit the links thus allowing me to keep my own linklists to some semblance of manageableness….Hmmm, mebbe I should apply to become a gummint speechifier…
May 23, 2002, 9:00 pmMICK says:
A hundred bucks?!?
Raise those prices, some of us are trying to make a living out here ;)
May 23, 2002, 9:43 pmRay says:
Hi Glenn,
Hmm, talking about people visiting to see if anything has changed, why not add an RDF file? My system is set up to give a list of articles available at several different sites, and I click on one when I see a heading that looks interesting, or I notice new headings. It saves me a lot of checking, and would be a neat feature.
BTW, a great log analyser can be found at: http://awstats.sourceforge.net
May 24, 2002, 2:53 amSekimori says:
Host Matters includes AW Stats in it’s Control Panel. I agree, it is very good.
May 24, 2002, 3:23 am