Why are 75% of my website hits from abroad?

[rob1963]

According to my webstats, 75% of my site's hits are from abroad, with only 25% from Great Britain.

I find this strange, as I'm an English business with a .co.uk web address, and all my advertising is on English directories & English wedding suppliers sites.

Do the rest of you get 75% of your hits from abroad, or is it just me? and if it IS just me, do you have any ideas why?

:confused:

[Jiggles]

According to my webstats, 75% of my site's hits are from abroad, with only 25% from Great Britain.

I find this strange, as I'm an English business with a .co.uk web address, and all my advertising is on English directories & English wedding suppliers sites.

Do the rest of you get 75% of your hits from abroad, or is it just me? and if it IS just me, do you have any ideas why?

:confused:

I think it because some of the ISP are abroad Eg AOL! that give out foreign Ip's that your website picks up as them being foreign so it looks like all your hits are form alover the world :):D

[CRAZY K]

According to my webstats, 75% of my site's hits are from abroad, with only 25% from Great Britain.

I find this strange, as I'm an English business with a .co.uk web address, and all my advertising is on English directories & English wedding suppliers sites.

Do the rest of you get 75% of your hits from abroad, or is it just me? and if it IS just me, do you have any ideas why?

:confused:

I cant give a technical answer but I dont bother with website stats-- the number of enquiries we actually get that pay us money is all I am interested in and thats easy to work out---its called bookings:D

If thats not going well then its time to start looking at a revamp of your site.

Overseas visitors I guess wont be any use to many of us?

CRAZY K

CRAZY K

[rob1963]

I dont bother with website stats-- the number of enquiries we actually get that pay us money is all I am interested in and thats easy to work out---its called bookings :D

CRAZY K

Hiya Crazy K,

I think website stats are important...but only the ones which show which OTHER sites people are connecting to MY site from.

That way, I can target my advertising more effectively. If I get quite a few hits from my listing on a particular site, I might pay to upgrade that listing. On the other hand, if any of my ads (especially the more expensive ones) are not producing any hits to my site, then I'll cancel them.

It's all about targeting my advertising to the sites which produce the most hits to my site, because more hits = more enquiries, and more enquiries = more bookings.....and as you say, at the end of the day it's bookings that count! :)

[TonyB]

Depending on how your web stats package is set up, the most likely cause is search engines indexing the site. Google, MSN, Asks Jeeves for example will show up as a .com hit from overseas.

If your host haven't set up the stats to exclude search engines then they will show as a hit.

[sleah]

IP's are actually country specific, well at least one's dished out inside a country. As mentioned many will be from worldwide search engines.
Although a search engine (or any site for that matter) may appear to be from this country, it may well be hosted abroad, hence a non-UK IP address.
You will also find an alarmingly large portion are attempts to hack your website.
I have played around hosting sites on local servers and the raw log files make scary reading.
I have seen a massive number of hits attempting to access system commands or trying common usernames for ftp access. Good security (which most ISPs have) keeps these attempts at bay.
I've set up a test site and there could be 1000 hits. 100 will be me testing and the other 900 obvious attempted hacks, this is no exageration.

It would be interesting to see your raw log files, not just IP hits, but what they were actually trying to see.

[Marc J]

Rob, there's a difference in the way AWStats and Webalizer present your stats. This can include quite a variation in the geographic IP locations. Have a look at both, although I'm not sure which is more accurate!

Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) is free and very easy to integrate into a site, and if you're a "stats man" would keep you busy for hours on end! It's full of very useful (and not-so-useful) detailed stats, and you can define visitor goals which in your case would be a submitted contact form.

[rob1963]

Rob, there's a difference in the way AWStats and Webalizer present your stats. This can include quite a variation in the geographic IP locations. Have a look at both, although I'm not sure which is more accurate!

Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) is free and very easy to integrate into a site, and if you're a "stats man" would keep you busy for hours on end! It's full of very useful (and not-so-useful) detailed stats, and you can define visitor goals which in your case would be a submitted contact form.

Thanks for the info Marc.

I'm actually NOT a stats man, and was just curious because so many of my hits appeared to be from abroad.

The only stats I'm really interested in are the ones which show which other sites (IE the ones I advertise on) people are linking to MY site from. That way, I can target my advertising much more effectively. :)

[CRAZY K]

Hiya Crazy K,

I think website stats are important...but only the ones which show which OTHER sites people are connecting to MY site from.

That way, I can target my advertising more effectively. If I get quite a few hits from my listing on a particular site, I might pay to upgrade that listing. On the other hand, if any of my ads (especially the more expensive ones) are not producing any hits to my site, then I'll cancel them.

It's all about targeting my advertising to the sites which produce the most hits to my site, because more hits = more enquiries, and more enquiries = more bookings.....and as you say, at the end of the day it's bookings that count! :)

Hi Rob, fair comment, all I can say is that I dont pay for ads myself but have free ads on plenty of Disco/Wedding sites.

Sadly I actually complete about one booking a year from these which is pretty hopeless--Rice refers more business to me from his website that goes ahead than that I get direct from such sites.

Whats your general experience with sites that you pay for ads---without naming names.

Although I operate in a different market to mainstream Disco the odd ads I have paid for (not many) have been a waste of time.

Im not too impressed with some of the ones that have approached me recently where you pay a pound a lead.

What I found was that they send the "enquiry" to you and three others--reducing your success rate quite a bit :eek:

I have given up on paid ads now--just keep to a direct Website prescence.

regards

CRAZY K