By: Arthur
16 Jan 2008 5:04pm GMT I've blocked google-analytics.com (and some other hosts) in some of my hosts files directly. Not because I dislike Google or advertising, but simply because it sometimes takes a really long time to resolve the domain, especially when using a flaky wireless connection. I'm just not willing to wait 10 seconds for a page load which otherwise would take half a second. Which means that I'm usually not counted when surfing the net...
By: eddie
16 Jan 2008 5:04pm GMT There are lot of people using noscript. As it comes blocked by default and there is no reason to unblock it, people keep blocking google analytics. anyway I believe some spyware residents do the same and block some google domains.
By: Stoffe
16 Jan 2008 5:04pm GMT Adblockers seems most likely. It's very unlikely that 99% of even the most tech-savvy paranoid Firefox-using crowd is using noscript (even though that contributes), but just about EVERYONE uses an adblocker, savvy or not. It's come to the point where even Joe Sixpack's mother, Jane Sixpack is thinking "what the hell" when seeing a common news site on an unblocked computer at a friends place. "Is that what it actually looks like? Oh. My. God."
By: Christer Edwards
16 Jan 2008 5:04pm GMT Good point. Last nite I switched from statcounter to awstats using my own logs and I actually have much more traffic than I ever thought. Statcounter apparently didn't get everything or, since it was a free service, would overwrite previous stats based on my 'free' log size. I'll have a tutorial on awstats coming up by the end of the day on my blog.
By: Kirrus
16 Jan 2008 5:04pm GMT What stats software are you using? I prefer analytics, just because it gives me a lot more detail, a lot more easily than other stat packages. (Referrers, geolocation, etc). Also take into account feed readers: analytics can't record stats for those using linux boxes to pull your rss feed...