Referring URL, Referring Domain, Search Engines

Whats what

[jkruit]

I'm trying to understand my tracking files.

I have a no cost, antique tracking system. It works well but it doesn't give me reports and there is 1 report I need. So I was making my own report using Referring Domain because it includes domains that I have purchased links on. example

May June July
Altavista
Google

and so forth. However, on search engines it works funny.
In referring Domains for Alta Vista, I get 8, Google 3,500. But in Search Engines I get 61 and 8670 respectively.

So here is the question. Which one of these tracking reports is the best one to use? They seem so similar and yet the stats are so different.

[John Carpenter]

No software is perfect. The tracker you use may contain bugs. Just try more than two tools and you should be able to find out which of them is flawed.