cornwall - 11:39 am on Nov 21, 2002 (gmt 0)

And...

Having rooted round in AOL's Webmaster info,
[webmaster.aol.com...]
they appear to cache web info for 24 hours and serve it up without re-testing www.mysite.com

The AOL cache will not serve a cached object for more than 24 hours without revalidating it with the origin server even if this value is set to expire the object more than 24 hours into the future. Last-Modified: States the time an object was modified. Objects with a ""Last Modified"" header without an ""Expires:"" header will be cached for 20% of the age of the object but not more than 24 hours. The age of the object is determined by subtracting the ""Last-Modified:"" time from the current time: Maximum Time in Cache before Marked Stale = (Date Served - Last Modified) * 20% If the requested object is determined to be stale, the cache will send an If Modified Since request to the origin server. The cache will update the object if it has been modified. If no changes have occurred, the object will receive updated Date Served headers and remain fresh until it the age equation determines it to be stale again.

This would appear to mean that (in the case of AOL) they serve up without re-checking up to 24 hours. In other words, no entry in your log file (unless you have set metas to vary this 24 hour rule)

And that after 24 hours all that will appear is an "if modified" request on your log files if another AOL client requests info on your site. If you have not modified your site, then the cached version stays in place for any other users in the next 24 hours and so on.

As I understand that, they only cache any page(s) that the first user requested, after that they will have to request more pages if their further clients request them, from your server. These will show up on your logs.

Still begs the question as to how that shows up on your logs.

Makes me think a big site with lots of pages even if it is updated infrequently will still register visits after periods of time for the above reason

And that small sites, updated rarely (for example an individual hotel site) will probably get a flush of "extra" visits each time they update.