BellaOnline Forums Computers Web Design Freebie Counter vs. Webtrends

Someone told me about the webtrend on EasyCgi, my webhost. I was not aware I had this feature. I have been looking them over and I have a question. Are they generally accurate. I ask because I have been using a freebie counter. While I know it is probably inaccurate, there seems to be quite a numbers difference. For instance according to the freebie, my hits daily average 150 for unique. I found this low, but wasn't sure because who knew if my previous freebie counter was accurate. My log thru Easy says it's an average of 650 uniques daily. This is quite a difference. How can this be?
Also, if this needs to be another thread, I'll gladly repost.

HI Nicci,

Your question is most welcome here. I suspect the difference is that the free counter only indicates the visitors that go to the actual page that the counter is on (usually the index entry page). Webtrend will count the entries from all of your pages, thus gives a more accurate indication of your true visitor count.

Hope this helps, <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

June

Yes, June. I believe it does. The webtrends probably counts bot visits or at least this has been suggested to me. I'm not sure how many they would account for, but I think the major difference is the other pathways into the site. That is the most helpful thing that has been pointed out to me. Thank you very much! Nicci

In the end, unless you can get actual log files and crunch the data provided by them, it's really hard to tell what is happening with a web site. In the early dot.com boom days, so many sites inflated their web traffic reports to the advertisers, which is part of why the bubble burst....

I get raw log files for my site and periodically run them through a program called Summary. I've only used the free 30 day version, but it's worked so well, I may register for a full version one.