Re: tlug: Interesting statistic

[Howard Abbey <habbey@example.com>]

Well, Stephen J. Turnbull's mail just arrived, so just consider this an
echo of his mail, with more details of the Hit-o-meter's operation and
clientele.

John De Hoog wrote:
> "We [=Web Site Journal] took more than 2,000,000 Web pageviews
> >from approximately 5,000 Web sites using Web Site Garage's
> Hitometer and found the following statistics:
> 
> Windows 95              63.2%
> Windows 98              16.3%
>...
> Linux                        0.6%
> 
> [end quote]


> (Assuming the results are meaningful, 
There's a few things that make this data nearly-worthless for estimating 
'total web presence.'  

5,000 web sites of how many on the web?  Perhaps enough to be 
statistically relevant, but I doubt it.

This 'hitometer' would only be used on sites without access to the web
server logs.  This rules out large companies, and many small companies 
as well.   It would be also used only by web page makers willing to pay
to 
see who is visiting their site.   I doubt (m)any individuals would pay
for 
this, when similar free counters are available for an less detailed info 
fix.  My suspicion is that it's only people selling something, or people 
in a rush to get on the on-line bandwagon.  So this 'survey'
self-selects 
the type of web-pages, and therefore the type of people looking.  This
is 
my biggest guess as to the outcome of the results.

The 'hitometer' uses a loadable graphic to record visits.  So, it
ignores:
text-only browsers 
browsers with graphics turned off
people who filter out web advertisements and counter.cgi
people too impatient for the extra slow graphic to load

It gets confused by:
people behind proxies / firewalls / caching sites

None of these are restricted to Linux users.  (I know all are available
to at least Windows users.)  However, it may be true that Linux users
fall into the above categories more often.

My guess is that the results are a mix of the second thing you
suggested, 'hiding their (Linux) identities', and mostly the third, but
instead of 'don't Web browse very much', don't browse sites collecting
information amateurishly very much.

-- 
Howard
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