Friday, February 1, 2008

Why I hate AOL

I use StatCounter, mainly to track my visitors so that I can know if BlogHer will be sending me a coffee habit check (seriously, with my traffic, I have netted an entire $28 since August). It also is entertaining to see what urls referred people to my site, i.e. what kind of crazy Google searches landed people here. Finally, I like having StatCounter, as I can see who's visiting - even when they don't comment - knowing where this reader and that hails from, and/or who their employer is (busted!) it's fairly easy to deduce.

But, as StatCounter says:
...The uniqueness in this case is based on your visitors' IP addresses. This method works very well for the majority, but yet again there is an exception. AOL users, and visitors who use what is known as a 'dynamic web proxy' that changes each time they access a webpage. So if a single AOL user visits 7 webpages on your website it will likely come up as 7 different IP addresses!

And I keep getting AOL visits that read a heck of a lot - which is making me feel stalked sorta, because I have not a clue as to who this person is. I mean, it's just so many visits, and calculated searches for my blog that it feels weird. I am not going to censor myself - decided in January that I wouldn't play that way - but still it makes me wonder who this person is, and why are my ramblings of such import to you?

Care to reveal yourself?

4 comments:

  1. I had something similar happen, it's a little creepy when someone comes repeatedly...I always wonder why someone would spend so much time on my site.

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  2. I say enjoy it!

    Only bloggers like us get to pimp our opinions out for the world to consume.

    FYI...If I hadn't already commented...I would totally stalk you ;)

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  3. That is bizarre. I never knew that and I also use StatCounter. Thanks for sharing!

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