[WEB4LIB] Stats on Browsers viewing the website

[Darryl Friesen]

> Does anyone have a solution to gathering info on each and every browser
> name and version that views my website?

Do you have access web server log files themselves?  If so I'd recommend
Analog (http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~sret1/analog/).  It's free and it
runs on both Unix and Windows machines.

> I have a field called 'Other' in my  LiveStats  web statistics program
> that makes up  one third of my requestors!

Online services like LiveStats (and the host of others available) are OK if
you're just looking for the most basic of information, but fall short (as
you've just found out) if you want any useful data.  Not to mention the
hassle of sticking their little GIF (or whatever they use) on every page.

> From following web4lib,
> someone mentioned it could be the spiders?  Is this in fact true?

It's possible.  We get a fair amount of requests from different spiders.
Probably not a third though.  Could also be a lot of different or custom
browsers that aren't Netscape or IE (Opera etc).


- Darryl

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  Darryl Friesen, B.Sc.                        Darryl.Friesen at usask.ca
  Programmer/Analyst                            http://gollum.usask.ca/
  Consulting & Development, Computing Services
  University of Saskatchewan                   "The Truth Is Out There"
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