BlogHarbor Home Page
FAQFAQ  SearchSearch  MemberlistMemberlist  UsergroupsUsergroups  UsergroupsRSS   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
Confusion on yesterday's Site Stats
 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    BlogHarbor Community Forum Index -> General Discussion
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
phil arnold



Joined: 12 Jul 2007
Posts: 53

PostPosted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 8:28 am    Post subject: Confusion on yesterday's Site Stats Reply with quote

Something strange came up in the 6/3/08 Site Stats for my ElvisBlog. The Distinct Hosts Served was 497, which is pretty typical. But when I checked Referer Summary, the first listing was 609 from http://mrjyn.blogspot.com/. Could you explain how there could be lmore inks from that blog than there were total hits?

Thanks,
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 4:50 pm    Post subject: Re: Confusion on yesterday's Site Stats Reply with quote

Could you explain how there could be lmore inks from that blog than there were total hits?

Hotlinking. That site probably hotlinked an image from your site, so you see the referers but you don't get visits or page views.

You can disallow hotlinking aka file sourcing if you wish, read Prohibiting linking to content on your blog.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
phil arnold



Joined: 12 Jul 2007
Posts: 53

PostPosted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 4:08 pm    Post subject: Hotlinking Reply with quote

Well John, it looks like you will make me learn something new, but that's good.

I went to the mrjyn.blogspot.com site, and I could not find anything that looked like a link to my site. In fact they said the article was thought up by them. So, I assume your assessment of Hotlinking is correct.

As you suggested, I went to "Prohibiting linking to content on your blog." I followed instructions to the Advanced Settings page, and yes, I did have "Allow Sourcing Of Files or Images" enabled. Before I unclick that, I have a two questions.

Is their any downside to this -- unexpected consequences?

I presume there is no way to just disable sourcing from just one or two URls. Correct?

Below the "Prohibit Linking" page is a link to "Monitoring Transfer Usage." I went to the "Transfer Usage Stats" for June 3, the date in question in my original post. I couldn't find anything alarmingly large (like the 609 hits in the Referer Usage). I couldn't even find the article (Elvis and Bo Didley) that the mrjyn. blogspot site posted. Does that discredit the idea that it may be hotlinking? Could you look at this and see if you can find anything that explains the discrepancy?

Another item that followed after the "Prohibit Linking" article was "Blocking IPs Thet Have Links to your Blog." This sounds like it blocks readers of another site from coming to your site from accepted things like Favorites Lists and hyperlinks. Is that correct? Why would anyone want to to stop that?

Thanks for your help. Sorry for so many questions. Phil Arnold
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 9:54 am    Post subject: Re: Hotlinking Reply with quote

Is their any downside to this -- unexpected consequences?

If you are deliberately sourcing your own images on other sites you own, you will not be able to. And search engines will not index your images. Which in my humble opinion is not a problem (that's where all the hotlinking comes from...).

I presume there is no way to just disable sourcing from just one or two URls. Correct?

That is correct.

I couldn't even find the article (Elvis and Bo Didley) that the mrjyn. blogspot site posted. Does that discredit the idea that it may be hotlinking? Could you look at this and see if you can find anything that explains the discrepancy?

I think you are not completely understanding that hotlinking/file sourcing is. It is not reposting an article. It is loading an image or file on Site B when the source of that image is Site A. Site B is leeching the bandwidth of Site A...

Another item that followed after the "Prohibit Linking" article was "Blocking IPs Thet Have Links to your Blog." This sounds like it blocks readers of another site from coming to your site from accepted things like Favorites Lists and hyperlinks. Is that correct?

Not entirely correct. Blocking by IP is useful if a spammer is trying to trackback spam you and continually accesses from the same IP address, or if a search engine robot is too aggresssive. Blocking by IP does not help control hotlinking, so it is not something you should be concerned about in this case.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
phil arnold



Joined: 12 Jul 2007
Posts: 53

PostPosted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 4:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

John: Thanks for the four replies. I'm sorry, but three of them brought up more questions. I'll post them seperately under the more accurate subject "Hotlinking," in case other folks might want to learn about this, too.
Thanks again,
Phil Arnold
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
phil arnold



Joined: 12 Jul 2007
Posts: 53

PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 7:32 pm    Post subject: A Different Hotlinking Problem Reply with quote

I am afraid this request is similar to the one I posted on June 4 that started this whole thread.

Yesterday, July 22, ElvisBlog had 196 Distinct Hosts Served, well below my average. When I clicked on Referer Summary, the first nine lines were all:

http://66.102.9.104/translate (plus slightly different endings on each one). They totalled 311, more than the total hits.

John, when you answer this, please keep in mind that I unclicked Allow Sourcing of Files and Images over a month ago. This was a result of your suggestion to read Prohibiting Linking to Content on Your Blog. The section that follows after that is Blocking IPs that Have Links to Your Blog. We can see that the IP is 66.102.9.104. Is this something I should be doing here?

Thanks for your help, Phil Arnold
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 7:39 pm    Post subject: Re: A Different Hotlinking Problem Reply with quote

I am afraid I can't understand what you believe the issue to be... Can you tell me more clearly what you think is a problem?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 7:51 pm    Post subject: Re: A Different Hotlinking Problem Reply with quote

Still can not see what you think the issue is.

http://66.102.9.104/translate (plus slightly different endings on each one).

Yep, look at the Referer Summary and follow those links. Seems some folks were using Google's Translate feature to browse your site in another language. 66.102.9.104 is a Google IP address. I don't see anything unusual there.

They totalled 311, more than the total hits.

No, they did not. Your stats show total HTML requests for the day to be 808. Take a look.

Still don't see what you think to be a problem...
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
phil arnold



Joined: 12 Jul 2007
Posts: 53

PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 4:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

John: Thank you for your prompt reply.

You asked me what I think the issue is. Well, the reason i wrote was to find out if I had an issue. I''m just a dumb home blogger, and when something strange shows up, I worry. To me, having 311 referrers from one IP address show up in one day is strange, particularly when it is more than the hits shown on Distinct Hosts Served.

I guess you are telling me it's not a problem, but I'm still not clear on many things. I hope you don't mind educating me on them.

1) I'm assuming it is a good thing to have Google Translate brouse my site in another language. Correct?

2) Why would they do it so much on one day and not at all on most others?

3) There were nine entries, why so many? Nine different languages?

4) Most of the browsing was to one ElvisBlog article. Wouldn't once be enough, not hundreds of times.

5) When I said that the 311 came to more than my total hits for the day, you said, " No they did not. Your stats show total HTML requests for the day to be 808." The Users Manual definition for HTML is: the number of pages viewed using a web browser. I have always thought blog traffic was measured in hits. So, are HTML Requests the measure of hits, not Distinct Hosts Served? How does HTML Requests differ from Total Page Views

6) I had the same problem, excuse me, the same situation yesterday. There were 375 more referrers from the Google IP address. In addition, there were 84 from 72.14.235.104. can you identify this IP address and tell me it's OK?

7) Is any of this using my bandwidth like hotlinking does?

John, i know this is a lot of questions. If it's too much, answer what you want now and I'll try again on the others. Sorry to be a bother.

Phil Arnold
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 4:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

1) I'm assuming it is a good thing to have Google Translate brouse my site in another language. Correct?

I can't see how having users view your site in their own lanuage would be a bad thing.

2) Why would they do it so much on one day and not at all on most others?

I don't know, maybe some website or news source somewhere mentioned your story?

3) There were nine entries, why so many? Nine different languages?

If you look at the URLs there are a few different languages and various pages.

4) Most of the browsing was to one ElvisBlog article. Wouldn't once be enough, not hundreds of times.

Seems like there were a few different articles. And once would be enough if you only had one visitor, but I think Google translates on the fly so it needs to fetch your page once for each user.

I have always thought blog traffic was measured in hits.

Hits is a somewhat outdated term, but yes it means HTML pages viewed.

are HTML Requests the measure of hits

Yes.

How does HTML Requests differ from Total Page Views

Total Page Views adds HTML and XML pages together. XML is your RSS feed and access to trackbacks.

...there were 84 from 72.14.235.104. can you identify this IP address and tell me it's OK?


Yes, that IP address is owned by Google.

7) Is any of this using my bandwidth like hotlinking does?

Yes, these are normal accesses to your blog and sending the information to those who are requesting it does consume bandwidth.

Hope this answers all your questions.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
phil arnold



Joined: 12 Jul 2007
Posts: 53

PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 5:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

John: Thanks for the fast and very complete answer. I really thought I was starting to understand things -- until I checked Site Stats this morning.

In the Referer Summary there were 1449 from Google IP 66.102.9.104. There were 14 from the other Google IP you identified 64.233.167.104. And there were 178 on a new one, 72.14.235.104.

That totals 1641, but the HTML Requests were only 539, and Total Page Views was 619.

So, now I an confused again. Can you explain his discrepancy, please?

Thanks, Phil Arnold
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
john
Site Admin


Joined: 16 Mar 2004
Posts: 3434

PostPosted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 6:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I understand your confusion, but unfortunately you can not tally up referers and assume it will equal your page views. We have to record referers for all objects on a page, so there will always be more referers than pages. Yes, even if sourcing is disallowed.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Send e-mail Visit poster's website
Search all BlogHarbor support resources.
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    BlogHarbor Community Forum Index -> General Discussion All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum