Re: False HitsFrom Nicholas on 3 August '02
replying to False Hits posted by Ted
>Hey Guys, anyone know about the visitors on the sites that
>usually look like this: cache-ntc-aa04.proxy.aol.com Are they
>robots or real people and is it common to receive hundreds of
>these a day?
If you're referring to AOL cache hits specifically, then
"hundreds" is a rather large number. As the other chap said, it
could reflect an actual visitor, or just AOL checking in.
Statistically, it's sort of the opposite of SE 'bot visits. Where
a Googlebot visit only tells you that Googlebot visited --
artificially raising your daily page view count -- an AOL cache
visit is quite the opposite, because another 40 people might have
viewed the cached AOL copy, without ever registering on your
logs.
(Yup, in theory a Google user could view Google's "cached copy,
and you'd never know it. But in practice most Google users will
click through to your site. Not so with AOL users; they take
whatever is spoon-fed to them. They wouldn't know whether they're
viewing a cached copy or the live page.)
