Winooski - 1:15 pm on Nov 23, 2002 (gmt 0)

Here's a resource I return to when I catch myself leaping to conclusions about referrer data: Jeffrey Goldberg's 1995 treatise "Why web usage statistics are (worse than) meaningless" ([goldmark.org ]).

He admits, "On re-reading my original, I see that this document is a bit hyperbolic. So be it. It is after all an acknowledged rant." Nonetheless, it's a realistic appraisal of the difficulty of trying to infer actual use of a Web site (as opposed to inferring actual use of a Web server) using server logs.