Peter Krantz — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:40:57 GMT

Karl wrote: “First, how do you know those requests are being performed by actual people and not bots? If you attempt to say that you filter out bots, I will show you one I’ve written which identifies itself successfully as IE.”

Well, analytics software typically relies on javascript to log a request when the page is viewed in the user’s browser. This means that bots can be filtered from the collected data and that caching between the user and the web server are irrelevant. It is unlikely that bots implement a javascript engine. Saying that you can construct a bot to mimic that is like saying that I can instruct a user to lie in a usability test situation.

I agree that analytics software do not replace testing with real users but I still believe that you can get valuable data from them that can be indicative of user behaviour. This may help you design test scenarios better.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Peter Krantz