How much is Google & co?

[J0hn]

Ey-up, chaps!

Before closing my website, I had a shuftie at the visitor details for the last year.

I was thoroughly gobsmacked to find that, for a period last year, visitor numbers were up to 37,000 a month. Now, I would never in my wildest dreams fool myself into thinking that 37,000 people were visiting my website - so I'm wondering just how much of that will be search engines/bots.

I was wondering if someone here who has a site could give a rough guesstimate of just how many of these bot things are likely to be finding their way to my domain?

Mind you - one thing that has me baffled is that these high numbers were during the period when I was very active, posting after action reports and videos from DCS campaigns and some FSX videos. Once I stopped posting them (everyone needs a break now and then) the visitor numbers dwindled monthly to a low of about 2,800.

[TSR2]

Hi John,

It really depends on what they class as a "visit." Those sort of numbers sound more like individual page click rather than separate discrete visits, but when you release anything or update content the likes of google increase your page ranging so you will get more clicks. Commercial websites often automatically change content regularly to boost Google rankings. Its all a lot of smoke and mirrors if I'm honest.

[J0hn]

Hmm, I was wondering exactly what was covered in these stats, too. Unfortunately, they don't say, though there were lists of the details of each one logged, with IP numbers, O/S, browser etc and lots of mumbo-jumbo I just didn't understand.

Maybe next time it would be better to just put a counter in - though if that would make a difference, I don't know

[Airspeed]

Oooooh!
My site has been up for months, but including me visiting for updates, my counter shows....wait for it ......99

EDIT: I've just thought of a prize for being the 100th visitor: I won't hit you when I'm drunk.

[TSR2]

Hi John / Mike,

All of the webstats programs will give you that sort of information from the basic Webalizer to piwik which is much more full featured.

[J0hn]

Ah, I found something much more useful - though it still doesn't tell me which visits are bots:



Turns out they were showing 'hits' rather than visits. That looks much more like something I can actually believe!

I'm guessing "hits" are everything including bots and "visits" are people actually looking at the page

[TSR2]

Hi mate,

that screen shot looks like webalizer, which is a great and simple little tool. It hasn't been updated in years, but still gives the basic info. From memory I think it excludes bots in the stats by default. Some screenshots from our piwik version are below. TBH I never look at it

All of the areas can be clicked on to get more detail (I've selected the month of April, but you can select virtually any time period)

[DaveB]

I'm interested in the CBFSIM Oxford by Dave Garwood

I'll bet Dave is too!


ATB
DaveB

[TSR2]

I was thinking the same thing!