How does gostats track 'unique visitors'?

[Molly02]

How does gostats track 'unique visitors'?

[keyplyr]

Hi Molly02 and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

Copy and paste the GoStats code into your site's code

gostats.com/faq.xml

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld, Molly02!

i am assuming your question is about how gostats counts a unique visitor rather than how to install gostats on your site.

their marketing site has no technical details describing this.
their are a few old posts on the gostats blog where they discuss unique visitors which may be informative, assuming they still do things the same way as in 2008:
http://counterblog.gostats.com/?s=unique+visitors [counterblog.gostats.com]

[keyplyr]

Their FAQ link I gave above has a contact link: gostats.com/contact.xml

When in doubt, ask the source.

[lucy24]

How does gostats track 'unique visitors'?

Here's a more generic answer: When an analytics program gets to work, it plants one or more cookies on the visitor. Visit with cookie = repeat visitor. Visit without cookie = new visitor.

[keyplyr]

Looks like GoStats also uses IP based tracking. Again, from the FAQ:

You have two options:
4A.Entering your IP into the field "Block count from your ip" or
4B.Click "yes" under cookie based blocking.

[tangor]

Filtration for unique might have different meanings. A truly "unique" visitor is by ip ... at which point the value comes in by culling out the bots v humans to arrive at a realistic visitor number. Factor in a 25% fudge factor for humans who may be running script/third party restrictions on their browsers, ie, people who will not appear in these type of counter schemes.

Raw server logs, on the other hand, reveal all.

[keyplyr]

Agreed... any reference to "unique visitors" is more hyperbole than accurate statistic.