The gnats in the stats

The start of the month means wrapping up data on last month...specifically web logs. I really find that Faststats (see link to the right) does a good job, but garbage in, garbage out. Here are some things I found:

• Multiple requests for pages that don't exist, specifically ending in .aspx. I assume this is some kind of attack, looking for common pages that may offer access to the innards of my site.


• Have you heard about how Verisign is now redirecting people toward sites if they enter a nonexistent URL? Well, I now have about 20 referrals from Verisign.


• I got two or three referrals from each of three different "EZ" sites from Thomas Register. Not impressive, but TR's main referral numbers are high.


• My log files now are recording hits separately for requests of the home page that do or don't have /index.html at the end. If I add these two together, my stats go thru the ceiling for the home page. Like 2000 more hits.


• When I created a 'mini-site' earlier this year, we made it a part of our website and had a little script determine which URL the visitor was asking for. While this site is 'mini', it is cluttering my statistics. I will move it out soon (more on that later).

October ends our sales-year, so I will be summing up this and other data in early November. I'll share more then.