NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Weird Log Data
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Weird Log Data
Brad Byrd (brad_at_newgate.net)
Tue, 1 Dec 1998 09:30:48 -0600 (CST)
RICHARD HOY WROTE:
>At first, I thought it might be the way Excite is
>redirecting on their end to count the clicks. But the
>difference between our numbers is very large. (They count
>hundreds of clicks on the final report; I'm counting
>thousands redirects on our end.)
<snip snip>
>The way the time stamps are so close together, it makes me
>think the whole thing is some sort of spider artifact. But
>I've never heard of a spider spidering an HTML banner ad
>before. Besides, The banner is being dynamically served on
>amajor search engine, so spidering it is impossible, right?
>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'd say it sounds like a spider to me. And, no, it isn't
impossible.
The "dynamic" aspect to the banner shouldn't matter...when
the spider "goes" to the page your banner is on (ie.
requests the page), it still sees the source code that
includes your banner. If it's trying to follow every link
on the page, it will follow yours too.
If your HTML banner has several "segments" that can be
clicked on, then this might be one reason why your getting
"exponential" clickthroughs... the spider would follow
*each* of these links (ie. producing something like 6
redirects per banner display), while Excite might only log
user "progress" through their site and miss multiple
clickthroughs from the same source page -- especially if
those clickthroughs happen REALLY close together (because a
"real person" can't theoretically do this; people navigate
"linearly" (theoretically); spiders, however, multi-thread).
...I just looked at a Preview Travel HTML banner on Excite
to compare, and the page source had 6 different links in the
banner to the Preview page... (a link for each different
part of the banner)... so they'd get 6 hits from the
spider.
And, you might ask, *why* would someone want to SPIDER a
search engine? Well, it's pretty straightforward: free
content. I wouldn't be surprised to find new sites
spidering engines to get quickly build their OWN databases
without requiring the MILLIONS of submissions it took for
the established portals/engines to get where they are today.
And I definitely wouldn't expect a spider like this to
readily reveal it's true identity, either...
Hope this helps...
--Brad
Brad.Byrd
Director of Business Development
NewGate Internet
mailto:brad_at_newgate.net
http://www.newgate.net
(415) 331-3127
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