Webstats: developing understanding and information for advertisers.
If you have a screen reader and wish to jump over the Google ad script please
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Other side of ad script served by Google.
Taking one day at random: on Monday 25th May, 2009 - a holiday in the UK. I did not visit the site at any time during the 24 hours of 25th (EDT). There were 239 hits from 46 sites and 80 visits. Of these hits 38 were code not found (404), and of these 38, 28 were by crawlers looking for robot text. There is no robot text on the site, and I do not intend to add any to prevent crawlers from indexing pages on the site. Each page carries a link back to the home page.
My intent is to reduce confusing hits to a minimum.
Six of the codes not found were mistyped urls. There were three out of the 38 not found pages that were looking for favicon, a site to which I have never belonged. One of the codes not found was to a url removed some time ago. I have replaced this url with a page providing a link back to the hosting website. One hit was to a page that has never existed.
Hits to the site in May 2009 have come from 53 countries. The stats show which urls are visited, but I am unable to tell who is visiting unless you have not used your internet options to protect your specific identity. Most people do, or only a site is shown in the stats as the origin of a visitor. That is the stats to which I have access. I have not yet tried to clarify what stats are kept by the search engine, nor who has access to those.
I will not contact you as a result of a visit, or pass to third parties that you have visited if for some reason you have forgotten to protect your identity. But I do not, as of now, and with my current arrangement with my webhosting company, have total control in practise over whether my webstats become visible to third parties, not even if I download each day's stats daily and then delete those stats from my hosting company space.
Science, People & Politics
Once I as publisher, have advertising sales people working for me (if I ever do, and I think bonuses ought to apply to all staff on a wage that is a living wage, and I do not approve of selling on commission without a stake in the company) they will not be given information about who has visited the site as the basis for a sales campaign, only the advertising customers I am aiming for, and these are the ones mentioned some years ago: publishers, higher education, highly regulated industries, ngos and igos and certain types of charity, foundation or high tech industry.
The readership I am aiming for are scientist, politicians, their aides and aspirants to these jobs internationally.
But all advertisers are actually welcome if my site fits what they are seeking to accomplish, except for gambling and adult ads. High Street betting shops such as William Hill appear on my site because of the exchange link I have with UK Buttons, and I do not exclude William Hill because I know who they are and have seen their shops on the high street.
Added 4th March, 2009. I initiated a FreeFind Robot indexing of this website on 4.3.09. It spidered 296 pages. If you input Ads by Google to the FreeFind Search Box on the home page of my sole tradership - http://www.gavaghancommunications.com/gcsoletrader.html - you ought to get a list of those pages carrying script for Google Ads. There is nothing in my coding (Helen Gavaghan), nor in the file manager for this website, that prevents Google Ads being served to pages of my website. Nor is there anything in my coding nor on this website to prevent the right click option working so that that assertion can be verified.
If you have paid Google to serve ads to one of my pages and they are not appearing on my website please contact your Google advertising executive directly.
Added 15.2.09 gmt pm
To be clarified by site manager: Was the WebMarshall I saw on the Halifax machine responsible for the temporary blocking of my site or was it because I tried to download something, forgetting I was not at my own computer? Was the flash of WebMarshall I saw on the screen actually because they have WebMarshall on their system? This issue as far as I know is unconnected with why neither I nor a witness saw Google ads being served to my site in Halifax Central Library. And to be clarified with Leeds: do they have WebMarshall on their machine and what was the software that blocked my site? Why was it blocked and was the blocking automatic?
Added 15.2.09 gmt am
To anyone from Google, I have now sent you an email about this issue, concerning serving Google ads, via a contact link on your analytics page. The last time I found a link to contact you, you did not respond, I hope to hear from you this time.
Added 14.2.09
In the 12 months to the end of 13th February, 2009 there were 102,124 hits to the site. However my Stats do not tally with the number of Google page impressions, but this very probably is not Google's fault. For example on at least two days I know that in two separate UK public libraries (Leeds and Halifax) Google ads were not being served to my pages. But I also know, because it is my account and I have access to the account, that Google has blocked no url on my website. On 20th January there were 451 hits to my site, but only 4 Google page impressions. These figures could be an outlier.
On 20th January I did not sit and work at a computer of any kind at any stage during the day, so none of the hits or page impressions were generated by me. I still do not know whether when Webalyser 2.1 assigns something to the US Commercial category the originating machine or the computer the search passes through just before arriving at my site is physically in the US, and I do not think what I have read from Webalyser is quite clear on this issue.
The Google script for ads to be served to my account is in my file manager on the machine where I rent space for my website. I have collected, using print screen, the proof of this. The code for the editorial on the site, GavaghanCommunications.com, which is copyrighted by Helen Gavaghan, is meant to be open access. It is meant to be one of the factors that attracts visitors to my website, and thus it is an important part of my business development that there is no censorship of this code. For it to be clear that there is no censorship nor anti-competitive factor at work for me as a publisher I would personally argue, and I have had and have sought no legal advise on this issue, that the right click option and view source option need to work. If it does not then I, personally, would argue that part of my intellectual property vested in copyright is being stolen from me. Once again I would at this stage (14.2.09) be making that argument without benefit of legal advise. The advertisers I am courting might, for all I know, want or need to keep their code private for exactly the same reasons I want my page design code to be open access. Again, providing I am not breaking the law, that is fine by me.
And may I say to Google it would be enormously helpful if you could possibly please make it easier for those of us carrying adsense to contact you. As it happens I am reduced to having to try to find the name and business address of your company secretary.
In the 12 months to the end of 31st December, 2008 there were just over 100 000 hits to the site, but it is far from clear what these numbers mean to potential advertisers, whether they are useful to them or not, nor is it obvious that the majority of these hits were robots without readers. There were 14,077 hits in December. 7193 ok, 5697 not modified, 944 not found (I am working on reducing these) and 187 partial content. I have not worked out how these numbers reconcile with Google page impressions, which are very low, even though it seems to be pages carrying Google script that individually are the most frequently visited. And it seems that page impressions would register even if the hit came from a robot without a reader, rather than a robot set in motion by a searcher -- if such things exist.
by Helen Gavaghan |