Rush of visits

How can it be explained?

[specter]

Hi,

I remade my web site and published it just a month ago,without changing links or texts,only a fresh look.
In the day I uploaded it I had a rush of visits that is decreased the following days.
Very recently,two or three days ago, I had a new incoming link from an important web site that resulted in a new,very important rush of visits,that,again is decreased in the following days,returning to the usual level.
How can it be explained?
Am I missing something that happens in the web when modifying a web site?

Any opinion will be appreciated

Sincerely

[treeline]

Often when you change a website, the search engine spiders take a lot more interest in it and revisit every page suddenly, sometimes several times to see if things keep changing. Then they get bored. So check your stats to see if msnbot or another spider is running through bandwidth when you change.

One link from a popular website or blog will send many of their readers through, they scope you out, have their fun, and a few days later are gone 'cause they're off chasing the next cool recommendation from that site.

[specter]

I cannot access my log file as my host profile this is not allowed,so the visits are the ones reported by the webcounter on the site.
In the first case,the rush after the changes,I had many new visitors,not engine logs,so your explaination couldn't be correct,unless than I gained suddenly positions in the SERPs and then,I lost them.Improbable.

In the second case you could be correct,instead,but the linking site should be visited always from the same visitors,and I doubt that such a site has always the same closed group of visitors...

Other explainations/opinions?

[2by4]

An onpage counter isn't worth very much if you need to analyze traffic, it's close to worthless, you could for example been spidered by a wave of email harvestors, whatever, you wouldn't know the difference.

Consider moving your site to a hoster that offers access to real stats, almost all decent hosters do that, it's hard to find one that doesn't.

Long term it's much better to have access to the tools you need than to try to fake it and spend all this time wondering what's happening.

My experience though is the same, spiders/bots love site rewrites, they love all new pages, and somehow that always translates to a boost in traffic, which then dips back down. Each quality inbound link will help build your site's position long term too, while giving you that nice little short term boost.

But get rid of the page counter, get access to your real stats, log files, log analyzers, raw count of page access just doesn't tell you much of anything.

[stapel]

If you're not allowed access to your log files, then you might want to look into other logging services. (Send me a "sticky mail" message if you'd like a recommendation.)

As for the rush and decline, if you got a one-off mention from an "important" site (by which I take you to mean "a heavily-trafficked" site), then this rush (when you're new) is to be expected, as is the following drop-off (once you're no longer new). It's nothing to worry about.

Be glad you got the mention and the exposure. With any luck, this will help you gradually increase your dependable traffic, as some of those visitors link to you and/or mention you to others.

Eliz.

[Rugles]

There are lots of different spiders/crawlers running around the net beside g-bot/yahoo/msn. It could be a combination of these spiders, plus maybe something from a university, or a bot from Europe or Asia. If you get a few of these guys hitting you in a short period it can really ring up a simple counter in a short time.

Like was already said, you need to see who is really hitting your site.

[specter]

Thanks for your replies guys.

Well,I consider my web counter very reliable.
It is from a counter service provider;
It shows up ISP,User agent,IP address,browser,OS,resolution,browser language,referral link,visited pages,time of the visits.
So it seems very improbable that it reports a spider hit as a visit...
Anyway,how could I check this:
Could I deduce it from the User agent?
Or from OS/browser indications?

Thanks again for your kind suggestions.

Regards

[physics]

Is your counter javascript? If so most of the 'visitors' should be actual people and not robots.
Also, most robots don't show a referrer url so that's another indicator.
Usually the referrer is the most interesting thing to look at because you can see if you're now ranking higher for some phrase in a search engine or got a mention on a popular web site.