Understanding Traffic and Stats

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Hi Tony,
We've had your add-on for a while now, and overall do like it.
My client is having some concerns with the data he is actually viewing being realistic though.
Obviously I know about bots, but am wondering if you have any tips for how to ensure that the traffic we count is as close to 100% real as possible. I don't really know how to tune up this add-on to work most efficiently at keeping erroneous info out.
Also, just to confirm, is it true that 100% of the time that a user is logged in as a site member that Traffic & Stats will link to their personal username instead of only the IP address? My client is concerned about the fact that it seems so many people are on the site without registering (and you can't purchase products or do much anything important without registering).
Is there a way to tell the difference between real human IP addresses and just bots? Sometimes I can look at the visitor info and it "feels" human, but often I really don't know.

Thanks for any direction/insight on how to make our readings even more useful.
Have a great day,
Kari

Type: Discussion
Status: Archived
medicimedicine
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Tony replied on at Permalink Reply
Tony
there probably isn't too much reason to be concerned. this add-on has been out in production now for close to three years, is running on hundreds of site, and has had a lot people examining the data, comparing it to their other statistics packages to double check the numbers. You are right to point out bots, but since this package uses javascript a lot of bots that don't include and run scripts won't be tracked. You can also analyze your recent visits, and if you see something that looks like a bot hitting your site a lot, you can exclude that IP address. There's probably no easy way to tell if a visitor is a bot, but their are tools on the interest where you can examine an IP address that can give you more clues, at least telling you where the IP is from, and you can examine the host too to see if it's related to a company or a ISP. Yes, 100% of the time a user is logged in it'll use their user name, and it even sets a cookie with their user name so it knows who that user is when they're not logged in (provided they don't clear their cookies).
medicimedicine replied on at Permalink Reply
medicimedicine
Ok, thank you for your response. I just haven't had enough experience with some of these things to answer many of his questions with certainty... and I'm sure he will still have more questions about this that I will not know exactly what to tell him, but we'll see!
medicimedicine replied on at Permalink Reply
medicimedicine
Also, my client was wanting a definitive answer on something that I couldn't give him, although you kind of gave it to me previously... So I would like to try and clear this one up and ask it again in another way! Basically to acces any of the "good" parts of our site, visitors must register and be logged in. Therefore, there is little to no purpose for anyone to return multiple times without deciding to register.
So... I know what you said about it setting cookies to tell us if someone is a registered user even when they are not logged in... but is that a good explanation for why some IP addresses do not have a username attached, yet it says this is their 500-600th visit? Does that kind of behavior make you think it would have be a bot (because that is a very high number comparatively)? But then, say an IP address is showing without a username, but it says it is their 8th visit, is there a logical explanation for why it might show that? Does that automatically mean that they have never signed in during any of their last 8 visits, but ALSO, the fact that it shows "8 visits" at all mean that they have NOT cleared their cookies since before the 8 visits occurred?
I hope this isn't too confusing of a question, but my client is a very analytical person and he really wants to understand this stuff!

Thanks,
Kari
ConcreteCMS replied on at Permalink Reply
ConcreteCMS
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