The way "No. of searches" is calculated

[Darek]

Hi,

As I can see "No. od Searches" value in statistics report for a given search word is increased every time the "Search" button is pressed. So, if person actually searching the site will enter eg. word "village" and then will press the "Search" button 10 times it will be represented in statistics report as searched 10 times. I can see this quite often in my searchwords.log. Here is an example:

2007-05-17, 13:12:03, 83.13.7.42, "MACZUGA HERKULESA", Matches = 5, AND, PerPage = 10, PageNum = 0, No cats, Time = 0.516, Rec = 0
2007-05-17, 13:12:04, 83.13.7.42, "MACZUGA HERKULESA", Matches = 5, AND, PerPage = 10, PageNum = 0, No cats, Time = 0.5, Rec = 0
2007-05-17, 13:12:43, 83.13.7.42, "MACZUGA HERKULESA", Matches = 5, AND, PerPage = 10, PageNum = 0, No cats, Time = 0.5, Rec = 0

What I think of is, that when the same word (with the same logical operator used) is repeteadly entered from the same IP address, then, perhaps, it would be better to treat this as one search in statistics report (but not as three searches as in above example).

Darek

[David]

Yes, each of the the above searches will be counted as a separate search.

However if the server uses the "Next Page" and "Previous Page" links on the search result page, then this is NOT treated as a new search. In the log, you'll see that the PageNum value will vary, but the search count will not increase in the report.

Is is debatable what should be filtered and what shouldn't be. For example if there is a 2 hour gap between otherwise identical searches, should they be filtered? What about a 2 month gap?

Also the 3 'duplicate' searches you see might really be from 3 different people. They might be sharing an IP address becuase they are from the same company or behind the same router.

Also some people was to know the total number of search performed as this is interesting from a server load perspective. So heavy filtering could mislead people into thinking there is a lower server load.

Other option would be to post process the results yourself by loading the results into Excel or Access.