Z-list Stats
Nothing quite like looking at your stats to realize what a goober you are, and for me it reaches at least two levels.
User agent hits to patandkat.com since I stated logging to mysql. Only the top 10 are displayed.
| Googlebot/2.1 | 5048 |
| Slurp/cat | 3757 |
| MSIE 6.0 | 3348 |
| FAST-WebCrawler/3.8 | 3033 |
| Scooter/3.2 | 2789 |
| Radio UserLand/8.0.8 (WinNT) | 2161 |
| MSIE 5.5 (YComp 5.0.2.4) | 1826 |
| Safari/74 | 1599 |
| Scooter/3.3 | 1312 |
| Newz Crawler 1.4 | 1243 |
I am "read" by more bots than people. 144,393 for the bots and 5,174 for "humans." So, in the top 10 user agents, I have 97% of my hits from bots. I keep my stats in a database, so it's really easy for me to show myself, and the bots, what a goober I am. On a more philosophical note, when nobody reads a weblog, it still makes noise. Sure it's skewed to only look at the top 10, since bots will read a lot more pages, but still...
The Ycomp thing confused me for a bit, but a quick search showed that it was IE people who had the Yahoo Companion toolbar installed. I had 94 "different" versions on IE with Yahoo Companion installed visit with 1,826 being IE 5.5. The next highest hit total was 25 from IE 6.0. That's quite a drop off...
It's pretty sneaky of Yahoo to modify people's UA strings. They don't really need to since the toolbar "phones home" all the time anyway. It's not like they need it for stats. Hell, it's not like I need it for stats either, but you know, since it was there...
