Top Traffic Sources - (not all views have a discernable source)

1. 71

   mroconnellposted 16 years ago

   When you click on "View Stats" for a hub, you'll see the message "Top Traffic Sources - (not all views have a discernable source)"
   
   Why exactly is this?  Don't most analytics programs show the source?  Also, why doesn't it ever show direct traffic (like people just typing in your url or coming from a bookmark they made?)
   
   Today, I had a sudden spike on a slightly underperforming hub (81 views in 24 hours, up from just 10-15 views/day)  But when I go to see who is sending me the traffic, about 65 views are have no discernable source.  I wish I knew what I did right.
   
   Any advice, hubbers?

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      guidebabaposted 16 years agoin reply to this

      This Particular Hub of yours is Perceptible by the senses or intellect. May be it has a link from some other website or blog relevant to your Hub that is sending Traffic to your Hub. You should look into "Traffic Source".
      
      I found links to several of my hubs coming from relevant blog or website. These Blogs and Websites have their own interests in providing the links.

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      1. 71

         mroconnellposted 16 years agoin reply to this

         Uhm, what I'm saying is
         
         
         I guess the important part of that is:
         
         
         Any information on what this actually means or how to get info from or despite the message?

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2. STAFF

   pauldeedsposted 16 years ago

   The referrer has to be passed in by the browser when the request is made for the page.  Not many people do it, but you can actually turn referrer passing off in your browser (or they can be stripped by a proxy server).   We could call referrer-less page views "direct" like analytics does, but for whatever reason we decided not to include them anywhere but in the total.  (Technically they aren't always "direct", but would be more accurately called unknown).

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   1. 71

      mroconnellposted 16 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks!  That's exactly what I was looking for.
      
      If a large number of unknown views occur on the same day, it might be just a few people who use the same proxy server that strips the referring page then?

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      1. STAFF

         pauldeedsposted 16 years agoin reply to this

         That's certainly a possibility, but it is relatively unusual for a proxy to do strip referrer data.
         
         We collect our page view data using a one pixel gif.   Generally robots and crawlers don't download images, but another possibility is that something along those lines inflated your numbers.  We do our best to exclude that kind of activity from the results, but no system is perfect ...

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   SunSevenposted 16 years ago

   I was thinking along the lines of - people accessing(surfing) HP using proxies.

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4. 71

   thranaxposted 16 years ago

   Yeah, proxy's do mess up tracking, and more and more are getting them, I am even thinking of getting one, there good protection
   
   Also Google does a good job of tracking it with there tracking program, although again, one click on a proxy program and everything changes as a tracker

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