Re:GoatCounter – Simple web statistics, with no tracking of ...
by AndrewStephens on Tuesday January 14, 2020 @11:12AM
(#22046133)
I can tell you in one word: bots.
Any site is constantly being accessed by bots, only some of whom announce themselves in the user agent. Some are deliberately designed to mimic human browsing and you can only tell by carefully following their access pattern.
Filtering out the bots from the logs in an automatic fashion seemed like too much work so I implemented a javascript beacon. I figure anyone without JS probably doesn't want to be tracked anyway.
Any site is constantly being accessed by bots, only some of whom announce themselves in the user agent. Some are deliberately designed to mimic human browsing and you can only tell by carefully following their access pattern.
Filtering out the bots from the logs in an automatic fashion seemed like too much work so I implemented a javascript beacon. I figure anyone without JS probably doesn't want to be tracked anyway.