*** Posted by Peter ***
I was just wondering, how a website in the avitop100 list can have more than 10 times the visitors on a single day, than it has on average days. Some ups and downs are normal, but that's a pretty big peek.

*** Posted by run ***
[I was just wondering, how a website in the avitop100 list can have more than 10 times the visitors on a single day, than it has on average days. Some ups and downs are normal, but that's a pretty big peek.]
Hi Peter

I know what website you are referring to and we were quite surprised as well, but after checking our stats the hits are totally legit. We also took a look at what pages were referring the hits and then everything made sense. Most of the pages creating the hits were about the AC-130H/U Gunship which have been focused on a lot the last couple of days, so the site has probably been linked from one of the major news sites.

In this particular case authentity was confirmed via IP addresses, Cookies and various header information to role out fraud.

Hope that helped.

Regards John Raahauge (RUN)

*** Posted by Not impressed ***
[I was just wondering, how a website in the avitop100 list can have more than 10 times the visitors on a single day, than it has on average days. Some ups and downs are normal, but that's a pretty big peek.]
Here is another question. How can a site that 4 weeks ago was averaging 40-70 hits a day suddenly rise to over 1700 and 3538 in one day. The site only contains one page about the subject and to boot the whole page is made from links to other reference sources, with no original material of it's own. The site owner happens to be a Java engineer (spooky coincidence). I asked a friend who is also a software engineer and he said that he could write an applet in about 20 minutes that would replicate this increase. Maybe I should try it for myself, but that would be unfair to all the hard working web designers and owners.

*** Posted by run ***
Hi Gary

That is a good question ;o)
We allready have an eye on the site in question, but where did you get the idea that he is a Java engineer ?
While it was fairly easy to confirm the legitity of the traffic from the site Peter was refering to, it is not quite that clear wether the traffic from the site you are refering to is legit or not.
We will have to dig into our log files a little more ;o)
Your friend is somewhat correct. There is no system out there that is 100% safe from cheat. If I wanted to I could easily write a program that would cheat the major banner advertising companies into thinking that I was sending them a ton of traffic (Money).
It is fairly easy to write a program that cheats the system, but it is fairly hard to go undetected.
To simulate a lot of different users you have to erase cookies and change IP address in between each hit. The only way to do the later is via anonymous proxy servers, and most of them are pretty much known and can be found on dfferent blacklists on the net, so it is fairly easy to detect that kind of cheating.
We still have to look into this particular case, but if you check his nedstatbasic link (Buttom of the page) it pretty much tells the same as our stats.

Regards Run

[Here is another question. How can a site that 4 weeks ago was averaging 40-70 hits a day suddenly rise to over 1700 and 3538 in one day. The site only contains one page about the subject and to boot the whole page is made from links to other reference sources, with no original material of it's own. The site owner happens to be a Java engineer (spooky coincidence). I asked a friend who is also a software engineer and he said that he could write an applet in about 20 minutes that would replicate this increase. Maybe I should try it for myself, but that would be unfair to all the hard working web designers and owners.]

*** Posted by run ***
Mysterie solved ! !

The dramatic spike in page views of "Landen's JSF Page" on the 26th is due to the fact that on October 26, the U.S. Military made what they termed the "down selection" in the JSF program. That means that they selected one of the two competitors for the prime contractor for the JSF program. They selected Lockheed Martin's X-35 model over Boeing's X-32 model. That was big news in the U.S. and apparently lots of people went to the web to find out more about the JSF program.


http://www.jast.mil/Program/Prog_SDD_ContractAwd.htm