bug in Came From and Keywords when landing

[greatrental]

Hi -
I had been having discussions with Chris but now have more information.

My Paths tracking if working fine but everyone coming to my site from google etc is now not working for the Came From or Recent Came From which are both showing BLANK!!

----------
So - as an experiment, I googled some keywords so that I could click on my site link as a referral to a NON-home page:

Here is what Visitor Paths showed:
New Jersey, Mt. Laurel, United States, 2 returning visits

Date Time WebPage
November 6th 2006 01:43:00 PM www.greatrentalkeystone.com/Keystone_Condo_Rental_foryour_Vacation-SEO.html
No referring link
November 6th 2006 01:43:13 PM www.greatrentalkeystone.com/rates.html
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/Keystone_Condo_Rental_foryour_Vacation-SEO.html
November 6th 2006 01:43:21 PM www.greatrentalkeystone.com/
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/rates.html
November 6th 2006 01:45:23 PM www.greatrentalkeystone.com/directions.html#arial
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/
November 6th 2006 01:45:30 PM www.greatrentalkeystone.com/
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/directions.html


NOTICE the no-referring link when i went from the Keystone_condo_rental_... to my home page? WHY?

-------------
New experiement: google keyword to create referral to my home page.

Here is what Visitor Paths shows:
c-24-4-55-142.hsd1.ca.comcast.net (Comcast Cable Communications)

California, Antioch, United States, 4 returning visits

Date Time WebPage
November 6th 2006 01:22:04 PM
No referring link
November 6th 2006 01:27:31 PM
No referring link
November 6th 2006 01:27:33 PM
No referring link
November 6th 2006 01:55:01 PM
No referring link
November 6th 2006 01:55:05 PM
No referring link


NOTICE that non of my internal site browsing was now recorded?


--------

In both cases, despite referring to my site from Google search, No INFORMATION shows up in the Came From, ENTRY page, or any Search /Keyword stats.

WHY WHY WHY WHY???
Your help would be so kind.

Guy

[westmoors]

Just looked at your page. The home page seems to have lots of blank space at the bottom. Towards the end I did see 'Code corrupted. Insert fresh copy.' This often happens when there are coding errors on the page so I ran your page throught the w3 validator and it was unable to validate it as you have no doctype declared.

May I suggest you try to clean up your code and then if you're still having troubles with statcounter, post again.

[greatrental]

You caught me between fast edits.
Yes there is some blank space at the bottom of my home page, But, the code / counter for statcounter is working. It is tracking my vistis fine.

I still am getting non-referring link or visitor paths that are occurring from the outside world and NEed to know what pages are executing the script such that my log is catching the event? Would also love to know where they are coming from besides the ISP.

Guy

[webado]

To understand anything you must look at the log - Recent pageloads. That's the defiinitive authority, unflitered by anything.

Anytime a visitor comes to your site from somwhere where the link to your site opens as a pop-up window (i.e by javascript) that hit will not have a referrer.

That's in addition to visitors blocking referrers in their browsers and firewalls settings.

[greatrental]

Chris -
Thank you for your continued help.

I understand what you are saying BUT... for the majority of this huge uptick in volume:
1. Under page loads there is missing information besides the Direct Referrer
2. Under Visitor Paths there is missing information

If you our I were to manually type in the home page www.greatrentalkeystone.com, I would see "no referring link" but also see what page was entered etc.
LIKE:
Nov 8 07:03:43 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States (76.16.193.54)
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/specials.html
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/
Nov 8 07:03:43 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States (76.16.193.54)
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/
No referring link


HOWEVER - Most of my new pageloads have ZERO information besides the ISP host, and the "no referring link".

LIke:
Nov 8 07:02:32 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States cpe-76-169-164-18.socal.res.rr.com (76.169.164.18)
blank
No referring link
Nov 8 07:02:30 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States cpe-76-169-164-18.socal.res.rr.com (76.169.164.18)
blank
No referring link


THIS IS MY PROBLEM - what are these page loads that isn't even registering what page url (the address line between the referring link and the ISP address) got loaded to show up as a page load in the first place??????
There are tons of them??????

Guy

[webado]

Javascript disabled visitors - very likely robots.

That's why I say look at Recent Pageloads for those entries - you'll see if javscripy is disabled right away.

No url gets logged when javascript is disabled at all. Not page visited, not referrer - nothing.

[greatrental]

Chris-
From my web host, I know that <50 robots have visited my site this month.
Yet I have >1000 page loads per day now where there is no information.

AGain, this all started happening on Oct 25 - up until then it was fine. It appears that they are from all sorts of hosts. Besides page loads, by looking at Visitor Paths, they do navigate around the site a bit - I just have no clue what pages are getting loaded.

It doesn't make sense does it that this phenomenon just started Oct 25? Up until then these mysterious visitors were not getting logged by Stat Counter??

SO - is there a way for Stat Counter to stop logging these java dis-abled visitors if that is your theory? ALso - if the visitor has java disabled, how then is Statcounter even registering that they visited if it took the script itself to create the the 'footprint' and log the page load????

Guy

[webado]

You can see in recent pageloads for each hit if it was javascript disabled.

Javascript disabled visitors get logged through the <noscript> ....</noscript> segment of the tracking code. You can remove it if you don't want to see them. it doesn't' mean your site is not being visited by those user agents, only that you won't know it from Statcounter.

The robots getting logged through that code are image enabled - otherwise they would not get detected at all. Google Images runs such a robots. Yahoo also (inktomi).

Your site may have been found by various robots. It doesn't' have to be robots from the big search engines, it could be any robots, for any purposes, including site rippers and email harvesting spambots. ISP's run robots also in order to build up their server caches so they speed up future requests from their own clients for instance. If the hits are fast they are from a bot.

Of course human visitors also can run their browser javascript disabled for security reasons. Except they wouldn't be quite that fast.

[StevenofNine]

Just in case you care, FF2.0 cacks up your page. Can't speak to 1.5 or non IE browsers, but, obviously:

The mouse-over text on the image at top left is displayed, under the image, in FF2.0, and overlaps other page elements in the top left corner.

Viewers on any browser not maximised have the same image cover the text when the page width is shrunk.

The page width is fine in IE, but in FF2.0 the page wants to be far wider than 1024 screen resolution.

Just in case you cared...:-D

[greatrental]

I'll check out FF - thanks for letting me know. It has been a while since I checked it on FF.

I knew about mouse-over but accepted it back then.

Guy

[greatrental]

Chris-
can you please tell me how to turn off non-referring link logging?
I had thought that you said to remove the <noscript> section, but I have done that but I still get tons of page loads from non-referring-links.

ANy suggestions?

Guy
http://www.GreatRentalKeystone.com

[webado]

You will always get all hits, with and without referrer.

What you can do is if you don't want to log those specifically from javascript disabled user agents like robots, just remove the entire <noscript> ...</noscript> portion from the code.

It doesn't mean that you will not get any more hits without referrer, because it's not directly dependent on that in any case. But you will not get those from javascript disabled user agents which always have no referrer.

Browsers like Firefox as well as many firewalls and proxies can suppress the referrer from being transmitted, unrelated to whether they are javascript enabled or not.

In addition if your site is framed as through masked url forwarding (domain masks the site which is elsewhere), then you cannot by any means have a proper referrer (it will always be just your own domain).

I also see your homepage uses iframes - the pages shown in the iframes need to use the frames version of the counter. However if those same pages get shown outside of any frames or iframes they need the regular counter - so you have to make up your mind how you want to handle anything.

[greatrental]

Chris-
the biggest mystery in all this problem of logging non-referral link page loads.

Remember, that it all started on Oct 25 after years of service on my home page. UP until then I had 300 unique visitors a month, now without any SEO or Linked site changes, I get over over 300 per DAY.

I want to be able to see where people are coming from, but all these extra page loads that didn't use to log are now flushing the log.

I have removed the <noscript> </noscript> form the home page.
I am not worried about the specials.html

Any ideas of why this would have all of a sudden began? I suspect StatCounter changed something.

-guy

[webado]

Statcounter did not change anything. Either you site is suddenly more popular, or you finally included code on pages where you didn't have it before.

I told you about the iframes.

If you have several of them on one page, each of the pages in those iframes also using the same Statcounter code, plus the page where you have those iframes using that Statcounter code, one load of the main page will result inseveral hits to the counter at the same time (one for the main page and one for each page in an iframe). Furthermore if on the pages in iframes you are NOT using the frames version of the counter, those hits have as referrer your page with the iframes.

I see some frames or iframes opened in some funny javascript - those will never have a referrer.

[greatrental]

I believe my page is loading much more cleanly and quickly.

Now - how do I stop the logging of all the "no referring link" no page url recorded traffic????? 85% of my visitors (or artificial visitors) have "no referring link" not everyone is only a few seconds either, some navigate my site (as seen in the Visitor Paths) but non of the URL info of page names is captured.

Any ideas? I only want to see visits that have the referring link captured, Or visitors whos pages are getting logged by name.

guy

[webado]

remove the <noscript> ...</noscript> segment from teh Statcounter code.

Then all visitors with javascript disabled will nto get logged.

[greatrental]

Chris-
I already had the <noscript> </noscript> code removed and it made no difference - I still had tons of page loads with no referring link, and no captured page name/url.

This is truly the puzzeling part. Overnight (Oct 25) my traffic increased 30x all of the 'no referring link' type. I have tried all different versions of the code install from the Statcounter code generator.


I just updated again with it removed. Yet i still continue to get plenty of no referring links page loads. Here is an excerpt of Recent Pageloads (only at the very bottom was a visitor with a referring link:::

Date Time Browser OS Resolution Country Host Name/Web Page/Referring Link
Nov 28 10:38:12 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States cpe-76-183-15-3.tx.res.rr.com (76.183.15.3)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:35:16 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-71-225-76-51.hsd1.pa.comcast.net (71.225.76.51)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:28:30 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States (24.128.67.15)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:28:26 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States (24.128.67.15)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:28:22 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States (24.128.67.15)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:26:30 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States cpe-76-183-15-3.tx.res.rr.com (76.183.15.3)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:26:06 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States cpe-76-183-15-3.tx.res.rr.com (76.183.15.3)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:25:51 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States cpe-76-183-15-3.tx.res.rr.com (76.183.15.3)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:22:21 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States (24.20.16.70)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:22:15 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States (24.20.16.70)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:21:54 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States (24.20.16.70)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:17:21 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-147-210-48.hsd1.ma.comcast.net (24.147.210.48)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:17:20 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-147-210-48.hsd1.ma.comcast.net (24.147.210.48)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:17:20 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-147-210-48.hsd1.ma.comcast.net (24.147.210.48)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:15:21 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-147-210-48.hsd1.ma.comcast.net (24.147.210.48)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:12:10 PM MSIE 5.01 Windows 2000 unknown United States c-69-250-161-173.hsd1.md.comcast.net (69.250.161.173)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:11:45 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP 1280x1024 United States pool-71-97-9-12.dfw.dsl-w.verizon.net (71.97.9.12)
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/
www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=keystone condo by owner
Nov 28 10:11:34 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP 1280x1024 United States pool-71-97-9-12.dfw.dsl-w.verizon.net (71.97.9.12)
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/availability.html
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/
Nov 28 10:10:16 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP 1280x1024 United States pool-71-97-9-12.dfw.dsl-w.verizon.net (71.97.9.12)
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/
www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=keystone condo by owner
Nov 28 10:09:24 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States ip68-109-112-5.ri.ri.cox.net (68.109.112.5)

[webado]

What do you have in recent Pageloads for those hits? if it indicated javscript disabed than you have a page somewhre that still logs though <noscript> unless you altogether have the html version of the code - whioch acts liek the noscript except for all cases, not just javscript disabled.

Anyway, your homepage has 266 errors on it: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.greatrentalkeystone.com %2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&verbose=1


One my eyes just fell on is a script opened but not closed just before your statcounter code script.

Nothing good can come out of so many errors.

I cannot check all your pages to see how you are using the code.

On http://www.greatrentalkeystone.com/rental_equipment.html you have the <noscript> ... </noscript> still there.

[greatrental]

I fixed the non closed <script> on my index.html page. I am focusing on the index.html page for the <noscript> removal as it is 99% point of entry. here is the page load activity:

Date Time Browser OS Resolution Country Host Name/Web Page/Referring Link
Nov 28 11:20:03 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-67-160-47-241.hsd1.wa.comcast.net (67.160.47.241)

No referring link
Nov 28 11:17:31 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-10-124-32.hsd1.ca.comcast.net (24.10.124.32)

No referring link
Nov 28 11:08:27 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP 1280x1024 Canada dsl.speedline207.229.electronicbox.net (72.0.207.229)
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/rental_equipment.html
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/
Nov 28 11:08:11 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States (71.237.53.202)

No referring link
Nov 28 11:02:37 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP 1280x1024 Canada dsl.speedline207.229.electronicbox.net (72.0.207.229)
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/#contact
forum.statcounter.com/vb/showthread.php?p=163389&posted=1#post163389
Nov 28 11:02:02 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP 1280x1024 Canada dsl.speedline207.229.electronicbox.net (72.0.207.229)
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/
forum.statcounter.com/vb/showthread.php?p=163389&posted=1#post163389
Nov 28 11:01:48 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-8-237-234.hsd1.co.comcast.net (24.8.237.234)

No referring link
Nov 28 11:00:14 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-8-237-234.hsd1.co.comcast.net (24.8.237.234)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:58:59 PM MSIE 7.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-67-168-237-179.hsd1.or.comcast.net (67.168.237.179)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:58:22 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-69-248-101-45.hsd1.nj.comcast.net (69.248.101.45)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:58:16 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-69-248-101-45.hsd1.nj.comcast.net (69.248.101.45)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:58:12 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-69-248-101-45.hsd1.nj.comcast.net (69.248.101.45)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:56:35 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-16-95-180.hsd1.wa.comcast.net (24.16.95.180)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:55:42 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-69-248-101-45.hsd1.nj.comcast.net (69.248.101.45)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:48:58 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States dhcp-140-141.ucsc.edu (128.114.140.141)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:45:03 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-17-49-121.hsd1.wa.comcast.net (24.17.49.121)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:40:23 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States cpe-76-183-15-3.tx.res.rr.com (76.183.15.3)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:39:50 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-67-186-118-242.hsd1.il.comcast.net (67.186.118.242)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:38:12 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States cpe-76-183-15-3.tx.res.rr.com (76.183.15.3)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:35:16 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-71-225-76-51.hsd1.pa.comcast.net (71.225.76.51)

No referring link

Date Time Browser OS Resolution Country Host Name/Web Page/Referring Link
Nov 28 10:28:30 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-128-67-15.hsd1.nh.comcast.net (24.128.67.15)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:28:26 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-128-67-15.hsd1.nh.comcast.net (24.128.67.15)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:28:22 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-128-67-15.hsd1.nh.comcast.net (24.128.67.15)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:26:30 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States cpe-76-183-15-3.tx.res.rr.com (76.183.15.3)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:26:06 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States cpe-76-183-15-3.tx.res.rr.com (76.183.15.3)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:25:51 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States cpe-76-183-15-3.tx.res.rr.com (76.183.15.3)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:22:21 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-20-16-70.hsd1.or.comcast.net (24.20.16.70)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:22:15 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-20-16-70.hsd1.or.comcast.net (24.20.16.70)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:21:54 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-20-16-70.hsd1.or.comcast.net (24.20.16.70)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:17:21 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-147-210-48.hsd1.ma.comcast.net (24.147.210.48)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:17:20 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-147-210-48.hsd1.ma.comcast.net (24.147.210.48)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:17:20 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-147-210-48.hsd1.ma.comcast.net (24.147.210.48)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:15:21 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-24-147-210-48.hsd1.ma.comcast.net (24.147.210.48)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:12:10 PM MSIE 5.01 Windows 2000 unknown United States c-69-250-161-173.hsd1.md.comcast.net (69.250.161.173)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:11:45 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP 1280x1024 United States pool-71-97-9-12.dfw.dsl-w.verizon.net (71.97.9.12)
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/
www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=keystone condo by owner
Nov 28 10:11:34 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP 1280x1024 United States pool-71-97-9-12.dfw.dsl-w.verizon.net (71.97.9.12)
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/availability.html
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/
Nov 28 10:10:16 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP 1280x1024 United States pool-71-97-9-12.dfw.dsl-w.verizon.net (71.97.9.12)
www.greatrentalkeystone.com/
www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=keystone condo by owner
Nov 28 10:09:24 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States ip68-109-112-5.ri.ri.cox.net (68.109.112.5)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:09:23 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States ip68-109-112-5.ri.ri.cox.net (68.109.112.5)

No referring link
Nov 28 10:09:22 PM MSIE 6.0 Windows XP unknown United States c-68-83-128-173.hsd1.nj.comcast.net (68.83.128.173)

No referring link

[webado]

On http://www.greatrentalkeystone.com/rental_equipment.html you have the <noscript> ... </noscript> still there.

Check all your pages.

[greatrental]

Chris-
I am not so concerned about my non home-page pages. 99% of my traffic arrives at or views my home page - yet it never shows up for so many page loads any more.

I am not sure what value getting rid of the <noscript> sections on those pages will have on my problem.

[webado]

A javascript disabled visitor (like a robot) will crawl to those pages and you will get all those hits logged with no url informtion. You said you didn't want to see that.

[greatrental]

You are correct - I don't want them. I am very skeptical however, there are just too many page loads from many ISPs - they can't possibly all be robots and there just isn't that high of a percentage of visitors (85%) with Java disabled.