Few minor observations from my stats
So, I have a few sites that I have been working on, but not marketing yet. Somehow, my webalyzer stats were showing that I was getting a couple thousand visitors per month already. Alexa showed almost no traffic. It finally occurred to me to check with awstats.
Wow, what a difference! I could see that I was getting "referrals" from almost 100 bogus sites. About 3000 visits were directly to [my site]/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php . I googled "admin-ajax.php" and learned that apparently that file was frequently targeted in the past for hacking. Sooooo, almost all these lovely visiters were actually wannabe hackers! (boo hackers! boo! boo!) As far as I can tell, they have failed.
The good news is that I am already getting a little search engine traffic for various combinations of "coloring pages". Not only have I not been putting up any external links or finished optimizing my sites for the search engines, I have not been specifically targeting the phrase "coloring pages". I had just put them as a subheader (h3) towards the bottom of each post, thinking visitors might like cool links to pictures to color.
The lessons of the day are thus:
1. Check your stats CAREFULLY.
2. Webalyzer is useless.
3. AWStats rocks.
4. Stay on lookout for hacking attempts.
Last but not least....
5. Write for your visitors.
Disclosure: I use Fatcow for hosting and Wordpress. And now awstats to check my stats.
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Recent Comments
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I agree with Dom - Google Analytics is the way to go.
Watch out for Fatcow though. I would switch as soon as you get a chance. I had so many troubles over the years with their hosting and poor support. Plus, they hook you in with a great deal for the first year, but charge you the full cost every year after that! I've since switched over to Hostgator, and am much happier.
Have you tried using Google analytics? Can't get much more accurate than that and it also helps your site get indexed
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DomW, I've installed a plugin for google analytics, but haven't used it yet. Looks like it would be beneficial to follow through on that.
emcash, Both awstats and webalyzer take visitor information from your server logs and tally and analyze the information and present the data as useful averages, totals, and graphs. Awstats is much more detailed, the biggest difference seems to be that it distinguishes between bots and real people (mostly). I haven't used google analytics yet, but it looks like GA uses a piece of Javascript code which sends the information to GA. GA doesn't even count bots at all, it seems; but it also won't count visitors who have disabled Java or block cookies, so visitors might be undercounted that way.
nathaniell, I haven't had too much trouble with fatcow so far. I have a couple weeks to cancel my renewal. Can you maybe tell me more about the troubles you've had? Do things change when you get a lot of traffic for instance? It may be worth it to bear those ill I have, than fly to others that I know not of..... :)
All, I researched a little about the differences in stats and it seems there are benefits for both awstats and GA (NOT webalyzer):
www .devonwebdesigners. com /2567 /awstats-vs-webalizer-vs-google-analytics/ thats