how accurate is 'unique visitors'?

I'm wondering how accurate the 'unique visitors' numbers are, on average? How many are bots? How many are me refreshing all day long, etc?

Those should only account for one within a 24 hour period right?

you can check the full details on your own website stat option, urchine gives you very good details, and you can also use the third party script to locate it

Hello Alan,

It really depends on what stats package you are using. It is widely debated on which one is more accurate and which method they use.

We utilize both AWStats and Urchin and I can tell you, they both yield completely different results. A bot should have its own are and should not count towards unique visitors, but, again, its stats package dependant.

What I have noticed is that all stats packages give you the same trends, etc - which is ideally what you are after - however, as far as being purely accurate, I'd say Urchin is more accurate then AWStats or Webalizer.

Thanks Andrew, I am happy to see us with more visitors every month, but was wondering how many of those are actual visitors. I use whichever stats package is built into my host's package. I haven't installed a seperate one.

Thanks again.

It's hard to say just depends on the kind of stats package you are using, what package does your web host provide you with.

I use this website script and it is realy great to check info about my visitors.

http://www.activemeter.com

Im using Awstats. I have the same question as the poster. Wonder how accurate it is!

Usually bots are not displayed as unique visitors.

For a non criticall stuff (pay per unique users per example) average unique displayed for stats are acurrated.

try to apply for google analytics.
it will give you very good stats

We use StatCountex most of the time.

http://www.covenantdata.com ...where data becomes information

If u r using cpanel then u can use Awstats to get the information!