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Posted by Ed Mullen on 10/18/26 11:40
JDS wrote:
> Hi, all. I am constantly butting heads with others in my department about
> the interpretation of web log statistics regarding viewership of a
> website. "Page views" "path through a site" "exit points" and that sort
> of thing.
>
The very simplest thing that occurs to me is from a user's standpoint.
As one user, I sometimes hit a given page many times but for a variety
of reasons. Stats won't tell you /why/ I hit that page. It could be
because I got distracted and went somewhere else for some totally
different purpose. It could be because the page didn't load fully
(images, etc.) and I left and came back. Maybe I looked at it on Tuesday
and thought "Crap, I just don't have time now, I'll bookmark it in my
"temps" folder and check it tomorrow (or in a month). Perhaps I landed
there by accident, by clicking on the wrong link in a Google result page
or the wrong link in someone else's page. Or, maybe, I did a Google
search, went to that particular page and thought: Ohmigod! just what I
was looking for!!! Or not. How do any of the page stats tell you that?
I look at some stats for my site and don't take them all that seriously
other than aggregate changes from one month to the next, figuring that,
given all the variables, at least I can see what page is the most
accessed, the second-most accessed, the third-most, from month to month
... but that's about it. Heck, my checking my own site can skew the
stats depending on the total number of hits. At some point it becomes a
bit silly to chase after the chimera.
"There are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics."
--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net
http://mozilla.edmullen.net
http://abington.edmullen.net
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