Interpreting pattern and frequency of a certain IP address?

[glamgal]

Hello - There is a certain IP address that seems to make up the bulk of my visitor entries. This IP goes to my Home page and then Page 1 of a 15 page section, and back again to the Home page. This same pattern over and over and over. I don't get it.

Is there someone out there who can interpret my stats? I am willing to pay. Is there a way to tell if a competitor is skulking around in my site?

I have a million questions. I need to know what my results are telling me. Help! Thanks to any good samaritans out there or anyone who can refer me to a stat tracker expert.

Ann

If you magnify that user you can at least see what country they are from, and what ISP they are using.

You can see what the user is doing yourself. Nobody else is going to be able to tell you any different.

[glamgal]

Thanks for the answer. I do use the IP checker all the time and have for this one IP addy in question.

I want to improve my site. I am using StatCounter to assist me in doing that. However, when something looks illogical to me, I try to find a answer from an expert. This one IP address is doing something I don't get, hence my question to you. All I want is a professional opinion.

What I am looking for is someone who can spot trends, habits, etc. There was a post from username Annied on Nov. 26 under the topic Confused New User who seemed to be asking the same thing.

All these stats are great and getting them free is greatly appreciated. But I feel like I'm looking at hieroglyphics. Do you know of someone whom you could refer me to who can put all these stats into understandable basic English? I would imagine that if I'm having trouble with this, A LOT of other people are too.

[delcyphr]

Ann:

I am not a professional, nor do I have a lot of experience at parsing IP information. I'm much like yourself, I imagine, learning about this stuff as I go along. Even so, it might be helpful to hear my approach to IP information.

When the current iteration of StatCounter became active, I was anxious to know everything about every visitor to my site. Now that a month has passed, I'm somewhat more casual about visitors. As long as they wipe their feet when they come in and close the door when they leave, it's all good with me. Instead of trying to determine each visitor's origin and even identity, I now spend more time looking at what brings them to the site and keeps them there: what keywords they're using in search engines, what referring links brought them to me, what pages are popular with them.

That brings us back to your particular situation (sorry for babbling on). There are online resources and websites that can help you find a little more info about an IP address. These sites search many WHOIS servers at once. It's nothing you couldn't do yourself with time, but having these sites search many registries for you is convenient. I have been using Domain Dossier (http://centralops.net/co/DomainDossier.vbs.asp). If you try it, make sure to select 'domain whois record,' 'network whois record,' and 'DNS records.' You can select the other parameters, but I don't think they'll be as helpful.

Depending on the information that's retrieved, you should learn the name of the visitor's ISP and domain name (if applicable; if the domain is that of a recognizable competitor, that would certainly be useful information). You might also learn something about the geographical area, even pinning him/her down to a particular metropolitan area. But you won't able to figure the name and address of your visitor ("You are busted, Brian Henderson of 12 Maple Lane").

As for the visitor's purpose, why he/she keeps visiting a particular page - that's hard to guess at without knowing the nature of your site. What about that first page of fifteen would be this interesting to someone? Is this visitor looking for more info, or waiting for the info on that page to change or be updated? Is it clear that this page is indeed linked to many more?

Look at how this visitor is coming to your site. Is it from a directory, or has he/she bookmarked your site? Does it seem as though your visitor made your site his/her browser's homepage? What do the referring links tell you? How much time does this person actually spend at each page?

Well, I have provided more questions than answers. Sorry about that. But I hope something I've said may be of use to you. Good luck.

[glamgal]

Delcyphr: Thank you so much for taking the time to give such a great informative answer. You've raised a lot of good questions that I can use to better focus my efforts in analyzing these stats. :)

We'll be targetting your visitors down to the city level as soon as we upgrade our database servers.

[Annied]

There was a post from username Annied on Nov. 26 under the topic Confused New User who seemed to be asking the same thing.


I was only concerned about the fact that the number of page views and the number of unique users are always the same, when I know that isn't the case in reality. But from what the webmaster says, this is a glitsch with MSIE 6.0. (I'm sure he'll find a way around it in due course!)

I love being able to track visitors (my previous stats counter had the same facility albeit not nearly so well presented as this one), but I've given up trying to work out the logic behind what visitors do and where they go on my website. Going back and forth between a couple of pages seems quite common.

Ann (aka Annied)

[dchunghk]

This is not something you would want to hear but as a clinical psychology major, I can honestly say that the compulsion to "randomly" click links is a pretty common phenomenon. I've observed that some people will go to a site for no rational reason. At times, they would revisit a website after closing the page for less than a minute! There are many hypotheses out there explaining the addictive behaviours out there on the internet but further research is warranted before we can arrive at an explanation.

Is there some specific content on Page 1? How frequent does this IP visit? Is this a personal homepage, and thus, is it possible that this IP knows you in person? It may help to go through all these questions.

Sometimes, the address listed in StatCounter is where the server is located and not necessary where the person lives. The odds are that person will be living within a 5km radius of the town/city. Just beware of that possibility.

[glamgal]

Thanks Annied and Dechunghk.

I'm in a very competitive business: bridal/weddings

My site is unique for a number of reasons (really it is!!), but one of the reasons is the quality and quantity of the photos I use to help describe an item. They are all my original photos, and for some of the more unscrupulous people who sell the same brand I do, these photos have been irresistable. They download them from my site, edit out my website name, and place them in their own websites. Three of the offenders got cease and desist letters from my attorney. Some of the others are eBay sellers. It takes an act of congress for eBay to stop copyright infringement. So I like to know who is visiting my site and I would especially like to know how to spot an up-to-no-good competitor!

Anyhoo - with stat counters, I have learned that what is really important is trying to analyze the data rather than placing a huge emphasis on just looking at the daily numbers.

If a person bookmarks your site and visits again and again via that bookmark, how does it show up in the Came From data? In the Keyword data? A lot of the "keywords" listed in my Keyword section are my domain name. What does that data tell me? Anyone?

Thanks again.

Ann

[Al Edge]

Digimark provide a digital watermark, but it is limited to normal sized pictures. If you resample them small, around 300x200 pix it cannot hold the information.

Al

But having the watermark does detract from the picture itself somewhat.

It's a difficult situation you're in glamgal.

[delcyphr]

Ann:

Now that you've described the nature of your site, I can certainly understand your concern about what some visitors may be up to.

You should certainly investigate some kind of image protection. No protection measure is foolproof, but if you can make it more difficult for would-be poachers to steal a clean image from your site, it should discourage all but the most hard-core thieves. Perhaps a combination of techniques should be used.

Al Edge suggested digital watermarking, and I agree. Digimarc is the most widely-known provider of watermarks (though not the only one). A lot of people like Digimarc because it can provide invisible watermarking. That appeals to folks who don't want their images at all compromised. Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with visible watermarks - the fact that the notice is visible will keep predators away, and I don't think most honest people are bothered by them. Digimarc also provides for searching the web for copies of your protected images that may be elsewhere on the web - I don't know if Digimarc's competitors provide that.

Al Edge mentions a problem using Digimarc watermarking on smaller, resampled images; I hadn't heard this, but it's possible. You might want to ask Digimarc about this. Perhaps there is a workaround.

You may be interested in this Duke University webpage on digital watermarks and technology (http://cit.duke.edu/resource-guides/development-protecting-material.html). Hope it helps!

EDIT: Al Edge is correct about watermarking not working in smaller images (about 100 x 100 pixels). But if your images are larger than this, you should be in luck if you want to watermark them.

[dchunghk]

Considering I've had no prior experience with HTML/web hosting until two weeks ago, what I am about to say maybe BS...

I would imagine those who bookmarked your site will enter your site via "no referring link". If the "came from" column lists your domain name, then they have possibly bookmarked your domain (which maybe your homepage) but definitely NOT bookmarked your Page 1. This answers your question but doesn't solve the problem...

Frequency of visit is an important factor to consider IMHO. If the person is visiting more than a few times per day at 30 mins intervals or something of that nature, then that person is likely to have OCP (obsessive-compulsive personality) who may have personal interests on the content of Page 1... unlike a competitor who is likely to browse through all your pages. If, however, the person is visiting every day or every other, following a stable and regular pattern, you may want to find out who that person is.

IPs and domain names will never allow you to figure out who the person really is. You can try the simpliest test: type in that IP as an URL because that person maybe hosting his own site.

Personally I traced an IP who visited my page to Lodi, NJ and it is very near a town called Teaneck where my friend lives. However, when I try to ping that IP when my friend is on AIM, it times out!! That puzzles me somewhat. Logically, my friend is the only person that possibly visited because my URL was on my AIM profile and she was the only person online... perhaps my assumption is wrong but the IPs provided by StatCounter maybe something different. Again, this maybe something interesting to bear in mind.

Sorry, I can't offer anything more interesting. IMHO, I doubt anyone except professionals can trace and IP to a specific user due to privacy issues.

Edit: you can, I guess, make those pictures accessable to registered users only. I understand that will lead to inconvenience for your customers but that is certainly a method to restrict access if you do not watermark those pictures.

[Annied]

Ann,

I use my website to help raise funds for PDSA (Britain's largest veterinary charity.) Some talented friends have donated humourous cat cartoons which I sell as small prints. All the other items in the Catsup shop are completely original too, so, like you, I'm concerned about visitors downloading them for their own purposes. In your case, I can see that putting a copyright sign over the pictures wouldn't be a good idea - it doesn't detract too much from my prints as the humour still comes across. (See www.catsup.co.uk/helen-prints.htm for an example.) But I also have some java (?) script at the bottom of each webpage. If anyone right clicks, a grey box appears with a customised message asking visitors not to copy anything. It isn't enough to stop anyone who's really determined, but it will cause them extra work and may make them stop and think twice.

If you'd like a copy of the script, just email or PM me.

[webmoriar]

Yes I was going to suggest that code for a semi-solution. Also you could check out www.grc.com and get IDServe for a partial ability to track IPs. I think the watermark idea sounds good though.

On a side note what is your website?

[Qusa]

Hi glamgal,

You say some of these are Ebay people, are they copying the image or hotlinking to it? If it's the later there is a way to stop them using an .htaccess file. Here is one link about it https://helpdesk.islandnet.com/help/imagetheft.php but doing a Google search on "htaccess steal image ebay" I found a lot more.

Hope this helps,
Kath :)

[webwey]

Hi Glamgal et al

I had the same problem with a website I used to have and found three ways to help prevent image theft. One was the javascript mentioned above to disable the right click function, another was to disable the image toolbar that comes up in MSIE 6.

The third, which I never personally tried so am unsure as to exactly how you would do it, is a transparency. I remember that you have to create a transparent image exactly the same size as the image you want to protect and somehow lay it over the image. That means that when a visitor clicks on or otherwise saves the image, all they get is a transparency, not the image itself. (I may still have the instructions somewhere so if I can find them I will let you know)

Hope this is of help to you and anyone else who has the problem.

[glamgal]

Al Edge, Webmaster, Annied, Webwey, Dchunghk, Qusa, Webmorior, Delcypr:

Thank you!!!!! I feel so much better. I will try all your suggestions.

Knowledge is power in cyperspace especially.

Ann

[Davefish]

Hi. Just a couple of points.

1. It is perfectly possible to digitally watermark an image with dimensions less than 100px X 100px. (using digimarc)

2. It is possible to watermark an image without ANY visible deteriation. All you have to do is make a copy of the image > Watermark it and then using a graphics program with layer capabilities (such as photoshop) place the original image on top and change its transparency to about 80%

Hope this helps.
Dave.