how to find out how much traffic a web site REALLY gets?

hello,
how would i be able to find out how many hit a web site REALLY get?
not by looking at the hit counter tha can be adjusted, but real info.
thanks

 

referrer (http) logs

 

Which can only be provided by the webmaster themselves

 

Why are you worrying other someone else's traffic? Spend more time improving your site and out ranking competitors in the serps.

 

You can get an idea through alexa.com but thats not to accurate either

 

In all fairness wwhomes, I can think of at least one reason.

If they were buying advertising it would be very important as a lot of webmasters inflate their numbers greatly or count "hits" as unique visitors.

 

If it's for buying a site or links and you don't trust the current stats then you can ask the current owner to put up an image hotlinked to your server so you can check the traffic from your logs instead of his/hers.

Or you can get them to install something like statcounter.com's script and get access to the logs.

 

You could use a nice stat system if you have permissions to use a cgi/pl script. (Log analyzer)

The one I use for my sites is http://awstats.sourceforge.net/. It gives really detailed information such as hits, referrals, bots, etc. Everything a person would need to know for the most part. Plus it is free

 

it is for advertising, i backed out of it.thanks

 

it is for advertising, i backed out of it.thanks

 

I usually use alexa.com to judge. Although it's not very accurate.

 

Really bad if you are looking at advertising. If they are selling it, it will take them all of 10 seconds to run a booster and pretend they have tens of thousands of visitors when they may have 4.

There is NO substitute for the ,ethods described that require some access to the server/site.

 

Yes, I known some cheater who use a tool to promote their position in Alexa.
But I think most webmaster are honest

 

T0PS3O's method is probably the best, but you have to keep the image on multiple pages and for a couple of months at least.

 

I use StatCounter on some sites too. I really like it - it does not count SE spiders and you can place the code only on the pages you really care about tracking. Really easy way to show the traffic you care about with no noise.

 

websites like get website value can give you daily estimated traffic

 

If this is about deciding whether or not to buy a link on a given site, there should be way more factors that simply traffic.

To name a few:

• Look at the relevancy of the site in relation to yours
• Check the Alexa rank, PageRank, Compete Rank, and/or mozRank
• Count how many other external links there are on the page you'll be placing your link on
• Look at the backlinks leading to that site

 

alexa is close to accurate

 

i use statcounter. Also the sites like get website value are very often wildly inaccurate.

 

if you need to know then use the google analytics you can get everything what you want about traffic and lots more.