Every time I look at the AF site, there's the "Who's online" thing in the left margin. Right now it says "There are currently 3 users and 745 guests online." It's 8:45 on a Saturday morning, so while the 3 users may be accurate, where in the world does the 745 guests figure come from? I realize that AF reaches more than just those of us fortunate enough to live in the heartland of the United States (CST), but still... 745 guests?
I guess the crux of my question is, how does the site determine how many users and guests are onliine?
And that after jumping to 757 when I posted the question.
Unique IPs active in the last 30 minutes.
Cool. But are those unique IP's real people browsing the site or could some be spiders (or robots, or whatever the hey you'd call them) looking through the content for search engines? Can it differentiate between the two?
My friend uses them for research. Come to think of it... I honestly don't know what IP address are used... I know that a computer can use multiple address at the same time... Maybe the set up a unique ID because I know that some of them use 'unique session ID's' So I'm guessing they do..
As far as I know there is no way from differentiating between spiders and real ppl from just the IP address.