User info is not doing unique hits, every refresh = a hit

Hangin' Around Joined: Oct 24, 2003 Posts: 32

Hey as the title says, I am using the latest available Raven Nuke and I noticed that the User Info block is taking everything including replies as hits. How can I change this to be 'unique' hits??? I don't like inflated stats.

Cheers!

registered · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6437

Those ARE unique hits. A hit isn't the same as a visitor. As for tracking unique visitors, there are a few issues: some ISPs have IP addresses that change every time the user connects - sometimes even in the same session. Using cookies or even sessions can also be a problem as users can clear cookies, access from different machines, etc. There are significant improvements to the default Nuke statistics functions (e.g. see MS Analysis), but that doesn't resolve the hits vs. visitors issue...

Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 9:27 am

I don't believe hitting reply/quote etc should fall under a unique hit. The way I see it is. The user comes to your site, it creates a hit. From this point on it should not register further hits on the counter from that ip address. I am not talking a user who disconnects and comes back. Certainly his IP would change but when he comes onto the site it should not reflect a hit every button he presses. To me that makes the stats pointless and inflated.

registered · Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 10:15 am

Well that isn't the way that HTTP protocols work. If you want to track visitors, you have to do as kguske said: use another layer on top of HTTP (use cookies or sessions). Everyone else tracks hits in the same way that block is doing, so it isn't really doing anything that unusual or out of the ordinary compared to the rest of the world.

Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 10:22 am

I understand that you want to track unique visitors, but tracking hits is far from pointless. Advertisers want to know not only how many unique visitors you have, but how many pages they see (i.e. hits = opportunities for ads to be displayed) when they visit.

Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 12:55 pm

kguske wrote:

I understand that you want to track unique visitors, but tracking hits is far from pointless. Advertisers want to know not only how many unique visitors you have, but how many pages they see (i.e. hits = opportunities for ads to be displayed) when they visit.

I am not doing advertising, I am creating gaming and professional business sites and everyone thinks the stats are meaningless and inflated. As do I. There are alternatives yes, but it would be nice to count unique hits rather than every single click on a site.

registered · Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 9:41 pm

They are two distinct things. Period. The nuke stats have been counting this way since inception of the stats. MS Analysis, as kguske mentioned, may have something more to your liking, but don't know for sure.

Of course, if you would like to write something which does unique visitors per some time period, I am sure the community would be responsive to it as another indicator of traffic.

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 7:09 am

Ok well people have noticed since we moved off Platinum to Raven that the hits have gone wild. That's all I know. To be honest, I never paid much attention to it. It would be nice to have a toggle however so I guess I will have to try an alternative.

registered · Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:18 am

phpNuke only provides raw hit counts. You are better to use a stat package like Google Analytics if you're concerned about unique visitors.

Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2007 10:00 am

Google Analytics tracks unique visitors, though I'm not sure how it addresses the issues I brought up earlier. MS Analysis shows hits by members, but not unique visitors. It does provide a lot of additional useful information in a summarized way - pretty nice.