» Server logs
» Concerns
The problem is that this data, in some sense, is a lie.
As explained by Analog's Stephen Turner (2003), the "simple
fact is that certain data which we would like to know and which
we expect to know are simply not available. And the estimates used
by other programs are not just a bit off, but can be very, very
wrong."
Because of caches and proxy servers, you can't actually
know how many people visited your site. The only thing you can know
from the log files is the number of requests made to the server.
This is especially true for writing programs. Because university
systems often use proxy servers, requests made from on campus may
not register on your host server at all--they may simply be served
from the proxy server's cache instead.
Tuner goes on to explain some of things we can't know:
- You can't tell the identity of your readers.
- You can't tell how many visitors you've had.
- You can't tell how many visits you've had.
- You can't follow a person's path through your site.
- You often can't tell where they entered your site, or where
they found out about you from.
- You can't tell how they left your site, or where they went next.
- You can't tell how long people spent reading each page.
- You can't tell how long people spent on your site. (2003)
These facts would seem to invalidate server log files as an assessment,
but they remain useful for a few reasons:
- Though you can't measure people, you can measure requests.
And, requests don't happen by themselves. Someone (or in the case
of proxy servers, something) makes those requests. The data continues
to represent traffic then--it's just traffic from the server and
not from users per se.
- Because everyone uses the same sort of data source, server logs
continue to be useful as a relative assessment.
- Whether or not the data is "true," server
"hits" have entered the common understanding as a measure
of a web site's success. That is, regardless of what the data
means, it still makes sense to certain audiences, such as granting
agencies.
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