I run two different web stats apps on my site and both record the same strange web stat. What I mean is that when certain visitors come to my site and visit multiple pages, instead of the stats showing this one person visiting say, ten pages, the stats will show them as ten ppl visiting one page each. I've been told that this is due to the configuration of certain ISP's. Can anyone offer a more detailed explanation of this and if there is any way of getting stats apps to read them correctly?
i'd rather say it is a question of detailed configuration of YOUR stats SW example webalizer/angolizer SW for most detailed stats has a config to decide how long ONE IP visiting your site is considered ONE visit in your case it would be the same as if you have a very low time limit or each IP hit counting as a new visit look in very detail at all configuration parameters of your stats SW or if better details needed change your stats SW to one giving you control over the data you need another option/possibility for such errors however is that certain ISP - in earlier time AOL for example - split ONE customers surfing into requests each one made with a different IP - in the worst of all cases such could lead that loading one page with 20 components ( gif, jpg, etc ) would show 20 IPs and those look like 20 ppl visiting you at that one time. It is quiet safe to assume that such ISP practices are mainly done by ISPs who want to cheat their size and make the number of ISP users appear much greater than actual size ... resulting in artificial blown UP stock value. for that kind of error in stats there is nothing you can do. always compare page views, hits, visits, and other data to see if part of a daily stat may be false du to one such ISP. fortunately AOL (0.04%) and similar ISP have become so tiny that they are no serious factor any longer and hence the stats distortion also proportionally small
Thanks for the input, guys. The problem is more likely to be the latter explanation in the above post as it's always the same ppl and those ppl often receieve a warning from my flood protection software. Indeed, I have had to unban a couple of ppl in the past as the flood protection has detectected a hit rate of more than 100 in ten seconds and shut the door on them. Their IP addy stays constant and does not change from page to page but yet still registers as individual users for every hit. I'm not convinced it's the setup of my stats apps due to the fact that I get the same results from both apps and it's only when dealing with a select few visitors. Always the same select few.