Cannot find source for 1600 new hits

[hfsturges]

My website is a "niche" topic and usually gets 50-70 hits per day. This morning I had 880 hits for the month. later I checked my hits from a stats service associated with my website and in the hour the total hits measured for the home page went from 880 to 2500+

I examined the hits for all the pages of the website and there was no unusual activity. It seemed to be limited to the Home page. I checked StatCounter and today (after all it is Christmas) I had just 1 (one) hit. I checked all the different features of Statcounter and still found only 1 (one) hit.

At this point there is no problem, but How could I get 1600 new hits on just the home page with no unusual activity on any of the other pages? I know, there is no problem with StatCounter, but just wondering.

[tosommerfugle]

Someone may have posted a link to your site in a "popular" place, like Twitter, Facebook, a mailing list, or whatever. Is there any referer URL? Anyway, things like link shorteners may leave the referer string empty. Any noticeable patterns in the visits?

[Arne]

Well, can you analyze "who" make those hits, from your server side stats?

Looking at my server stats software (webalizer), 23.95% of all my visitors, so far this month is - me! I made 58.60% of all hits.
Among all "hits" is the css files (I have 4 of them) and all images I have on the site, that I also edit and replace images.
Since I do all editing (with reloading) of the pages online, I produce a lot of hits and visits my self.

Among other "visitors" google bot and other bots makes a lot of regular visits.
And the front page is the most visited page by all. Some weeks or months they "visit" a lot of times and less on other weeks or months.

Non of the above is tracked by statcounter, since I have blocked my own visits and the bots, among some others are image disabled.
And Statcounter track only page loads, not separate "hits" to separate files connected to the pages.

I don't look at the server stats often, and the usual reason to do it is to see the bot traffic.
Only about 10% of the server stats "visits" are REAL visitors, and that is what Statcounter show me.

[hfsturges]

Hi Arne,
I am sure you are right. I could wish that those were real hits, but since they all came up in less than one hour, I know they were not me (I have blocked my I.P.). Don't know about "bots," is there a way to block those from running up the numbers?

I believe that my website uses some form of Google stats. I find that Google websites are obscure (for me) so I am not able to look into it. I do get a bar graph showing how many of about 8 different accesses to the side; and a page listing titles of all pages and the number of hits per page. That is where I saw the 2500+ for my home page.

I guess it really does not make a difference. Just curious. This morning I had a "502 error" - meaning that the servers were not talking to each other for awhile. This cleared up, but there may have been something there running up the numbers.

Any how, thanks for your response,
Hubert

[Arne]

Originally Posted by hfsturges

I could wish that those were real hits, but since they all came up in less than one hour, I know they were not me (I have blocked my I.P.). Don't know about "bots," is there a way to block those from running up the numbers?

You can use IP blocking and/or blocking cookie on Statcounter to block you own hits in Statcounter stats.
And most bots are not image enabled, so you can't see hits from them in Statcounter stats.
But you can't block anything from being logged from the server stats, if that is what is used for Google sites.