Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Isn't Cache Busting Based On Misconception?

Dirk Lotze (dlmusik_at_t-online.de)
Fri, 20 Mar 1998 20:53:20 -0100

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Dear Michael!

Thank you for your reply.

> As for page views vs. files requested by some other machine, it is
> important to distinguish the difference where possible. At IMGIS, we
> filter out spiders, crawlers and the like from our impression counts.
> Other ad servers probably do as well.

That is understood. It is, however, important that indexing robots
are not the only things that will give you a headache when trying to
analyse web server logs for "impression" counts.

In my original message I tried to cut out as many technicalities as
possible. I now think that it may be helpful to give some examples:

- for some reason I don't know my ISP uses three distinctly named
servers simultaneously for requesting pages. So everytime I request a
page (and files for a number of frames along with some graphics)
those nifty analysing tools that count "users" count me as three
people.
- many people use tools to pre-fetch pages in order to be able
to surf more smoothly. Many of the pre-fetched pages are never
viewed.
- even normal browsers can be used to request pages without
viewing them: try Mosaic's "map site" function or the "refresh
bookmarks" function of Netscape's Navigator.

So this is the software-dependent side of the medal. Naturally you
don't need software to confuse web-analysers:

I use Opera to access web-documents. When I find a link that I
consider interesting I get the corresponding document in a new window
and push it behind all the other windows at the same time (just one
action). Eventually I will come back to that document and read it and
maybe again follow some links.
Think of what that does to a tool that tries to tell different
user sessions apart, that tries even to determine how much time on
average is spent reading a given document or which tries to plot
paths through a web site.

All these analysing functions are provided with modern packages. They
are absolutely useless - or worse: they are misleading.

BTW: Many log-file analysers (and not only the cheap ones) don't even
recognize the less well known index robots.

The baseline is: When you are looking for a factor to multiply your
requests with in order to get impressions, you can't asume that
factor is greater than one. It could well be less than one and in
some cases it could even be zero.

Of course you can get some numbers out of logs. But then you can use
a srewdriver to push a nail into a wall. IMHO we should think again
before spending so much effort on an inherently unsuitable approach.

> However technology does exist for counting those impressions offline and
> uploading the counts to the ad server the next time the user returns.
Most users will love companies that use this technique.

Yours sincerely
Dirk Lotze

---
Dirk Lotze Musikmanagement
http://www.DLmusik.nvo.com/
DL_at_DLmusik.nvo.com


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