jpoc
February 13th, 2001, 17:40
I run a small, low volume website. I try to keep an eye on my log files on a regular basis. Mostly so that I can check for problems like 404s, get some idea of how folks use the site and where they come from.
On a few occasions, I have seen something in the logfile that I really just do not understand. I don't mean stuff like "what does that code mean?" but things like "why or how are my visitors doing that?"
For example, part of my site includes reviews of wine. Nothing really special or famous I try to highlight wines that are good to drink despite being at the lower end of the price range.
A couple of months ago, for a few days, ten percent of my traffic was centred on one single file: a jpg scan of the label of a bottle of French red wine. For every access, the referer field was either blank or included that phrase "you will not know" and there were no matching reads of the html file that referred to the image.
Also, every domain that made the access was from a French speaking country. (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec etc.)
Now I suppose that, perhaps some subscriber to a French language news group or email list could have found a copy of the html file in the google cache and then emailed it round the world to a bunch of friends who _all_ use a browser that blocks the referrer.
It just doesn't sound like a likely reason.
Another weird episode was a few days ago when I received several hundred hits from an address in Korea. My log did not resolve the address into a name but a lookup showed that the IP address was registered to a company in Seoul. The odd things about this were that again, there was no referrer field in the log, all of the accesses were limited to one area of the site, two addresses were used, 95% of the hits came from x.y.z.91 and the rest from x.y.z.71. Every single hit from the '91' address led to a 404 despite that fact that the name of the requested html file was valid. Every hit from the '71' address was a success.
I'm not expecting and explanation (though one would be nice).
(Also, I don't really want to post my log files as there are privacy issues there.)
Has anyone else come across unexplained mysteries in the log files?
jpoc
On a few occasions, I have seen something in the logfile that I really just do not understand. I don't mean stuff like "what does that code mean?" but things like "why or how are my visitors doing that?"
For example, part of my site includes reviews of wine. Nothing really special or famous I try to highlight wines that are good to drink despite being at the lower end of the price range.
A couple of months ago, for a few days, ten percent of my traffic was centred on one single file: a jpg scan of the label of a bottle of French red wine. For every access, the referer field was either blank or included that phrase "you will not know" and there were no matching reads of the html file that referred to the image.
Also, every domain that made the access was from a French speaking country. (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec etc.)
Now I suppose that, perhaps some subscriber to a French language news group or email list could have found a copy of the html file in the google cache and then emailed it round the world to a bunch of friends who _all_ use a browser that blocks the referrer.
It just doesn't sound like a likely reason.
Another weird episode was a few days ago when I received several hundred hits from an address in Korea. My log did not resolve the address into a name but a lookup showed that the IP address was registered to a company in Seoul. The odd things about this were that again, there was no referrer field in the log, all of the accesses were limited to one area of the site, two addresses were used, 95% of the hits came from x.y.z.91 and the rest from x.y.z.71. Every single hit from the '91' address led to a 404 despite that fact that the name of the requested html file was valid. Every hit from the '71' address was a success.
I'm not expecting and explanation (though one would be nice).
(Also, I don't really want to post my log files as there are privacy issues there.)
Has anyone else come across unexplained mysteries in the log files?
jpoc