I have always found Awstats to inflate the number of pageviews from what it actually is. Is this the case? Also.. does using sitemap generaters which crawl my site also inflate the number (in any stats packages, like analytics for instance) Cheers, Pete
This is the basic problem with all log based analyzers (Awstats, Webalizer, Urchin, Analog, etc). No matter how hard they try, they're incredibly skewed by simple search crawlers, indexing scripts, and website rippers. I suggest a 3rd party web stats program, one that uses javascript/images for the tracking, as they're a lot better at identifying real visitors and ignoring the crawlers. Use your log analyzer to check on search indexing -- to keep track of when Googlebot is coming by, for example. Use a 3rd party web stats program for keeping track of how well your site is doing and for reporting numbers to potential advertisers.