Re: Accurate user-based log file analysis

If you send marketing stuff like this to a technical list like www-talk, 
I presume you intend for it to be a locus of conversation on the topic.  
I'll even ignore the fact that is was cross-posted to three other lists 
which have nothing to do with this tool (www-html, www-lib, www-style).

On Mon, 17 Jul 1995, Terry Myerson wrote:
> We started shipping today Intersé’ market focus, a Windows based Internet
> marketing tool.
> 
> Intersé market focus creates trend graphs, bar charts, tables, and sorted
> lists from standard web site log files. While other tools count "hits" or
> "hosts",  Intersé market focus provides you with an accurate tally of Web
> site users. You can analyze your entire log file, or select and analyze
> sub-sets of the logs for targetted analysis.

I'd like to see your definition of "users".  For a sufficiently small 
site, letting users=unique hosts *might* be acceptible.  For large sites, 
there could be 20 people coming from behind sgigate.sgi.com or 
www.hensa.ac.uk or wwwproxy.edu.au or *.proxy.aol.com - how does your 
software divine those individuals?  What assumptions are being made about 
visitors?  Is the analysis happening on standard common log files, or 
are other types of logfiles generated and used?

If it's getstats++, say so.  But don't say it provides counts of "users" 
without also stating the assumptions used to generate that number.

> The software includes the Intersé Internet database, which contains most
> U.S. Internet domains indexed by city, state, and zip code, combined with
> other Internet demographic information. Coupling this information with your
> log files, the software translates Internet address into actual organization
> names and produce geogrpahic analyses of your site’s specific user community.

There's going to be a whole lotta hits coming from Vienna, Virginia, 
White Plains, NY, and Columbus, Ohio!

	Brian

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brian@organic.com  brian@hyperreal.com  http://www.[hyperreal,organic].com/

Received on Monday, 17 July 1995 19:36:00 UTC