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Server logs can't do this job well. If the system is designed well, in a lot of cases the users won't be receiving the resource from your server, they will be
by JimDabell 6y ago
Server logs can't do this job well.
If the system is designed well, in a lot of cases the users won't be receiving the resource from your server, they will be receiving it from a) their browser cache, b) their local network cache, c) their ISP's cache, or d) a CDN. Your server logs might be showing several thousand hits while the number of times a page is actually shown to somebody might be tens of thousands of hits.
Server logs are great for logging what is happening on your server, but awful for understanding your user base.
- luckylion 6y agoAre b) and c) still a common thing with most of the Traffic now encrypted? I wouldn't worry about a) too much, as you've already counted them, most sites are "one time use", and those that aren't usually have some interactive or time-sensitive feature that requires short (if any) ttl on any caches not under the site's control. d) is true, but also is somewhat under the site's control and should provide numbers. Most people use GA for a rough picture of "how many people visit my site?", and stats from any CDN will most likely be enough for that. And browser caching doesn't really concern those people, because most visitors aren't returning visitors.
- eecc 6y agoOh yes they do, and why would you want to break network caching to spy on your users? You can always add some little js to ping your server (logs! Again!) or a non-cacheable tracking pixel.
- baddox 6y agoSure, you can do that. Google Analytics is merely a free version of that service.
- bengale 6y agoFree to you, the user pays with their data. This is apple giving the user the option not to subsidise the website operator.
- 0-O-0 6y agoTracking (especially first party) is not some shadowy value extraction scheme. You need at least some data to improve your service and understand what brings traffic to your page.
- tennineeight 6y agoThe developer also pays. By giving Google their entire viewer/user base, so Google knows whom to target if they decide to create an alternative.
- acituan 6y ago> Server logs are great for logging what is happening on your server, but awful for understanding your user base. There is a high correlation between a usage pattern being interesting and likelihood of it making a representative appearance in the logs. Understanding usage patterns shouldn't depend on knowing absolute numbers. Assuming "dumb" content is cached relatively uniformly, the usage patterns itself should be sufficiently inferable from the logs. For the non-dumb content, why would consumption of highly dynamic endpoints have distortive cache utilization at all? To add more, how often high-resolution usage data really translates into actual product improvement? What percentage of sites have that much traffic to justify engineering hours spent on micro-growth-hacking based on this level of data?
- throw10382 6y agoIs it possible to add a basic ping that pings your server whenever a page loads (cached or not) to get around this?
- renewiltord 6y agoYes, with Cache-Control, and then if you turn that product into a SaaS so that not every website has to run a copy, you get Google Analytics.
- nindalf 6y agoI think some startups are now trying to offer this as a self hosted service. That sidesteps the concerns around using a half baked, DIY solution as well as issues with privacy and data ownership.