RE: ONLINE-ADS>> Measuring sessions

Steve Podradchik (stevep_at_marketwave.com)
Sat, 22 Feb 1997 10:11:43 -0800

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<werner_at_pobox.com> wrote:
>Your question is how to measure a visit. The solution is not a time
>interval. The solution is the counting of log-file entries with a referer
>outside the side. So you must not find the end of a session. All you have
>to do is to count all first PageViews of all Visits. With the referer it
>is nearly possible.

That a good idea but it's still flawed for several reasons.

1. Not all logs have referrer. In fact. the default logs from all major
web servers do not.

2. In the not-so-distant future, expect to see browsers optionally
suppressing referrer fields when crossing either domain boundaries or
coming from their intranet. Example, imagine a competitor has an internal
web site for some new killer version of their product. The URL is
something like http://projects/Sporto/competitors.htm. If someone follows
a link from that page to you, you now know the name of their new killer
product (Sporto). For obvious reasons, there is a certain move afoot to
suppress this.

3. Imagine the case of your site being hit from a search engine. The
search engine lists a few pages from your site. The person clicks the
first link (to your site), hits back, hits the second link (also to your
site). That's clearly one visit not two but your method would count that
as two.

Thanks, Steve

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