Re: Google sitemaps ... food for thought?

__/ [Justin Koivisto] on Thursday 05 January 2006 14:35 \__

> Timmermans wrote:
>> Howdy,
>>
>> I was updating my Google sitemaps and I noticed a saying on the bottom of
>> the statistics page;
>>
>> There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
>> - Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), British politician
>>
>> ...what's Google trying to say here, that (their?) statistics are lies?
>
> No. Yes. Maybe...
>
> Their statistics are as much truth as any others. The thing is that
> stats are only as truthful as the data that is used to create them.
> Headers and requests are easy to forge, spiders are easy to create, site
> downloaders are used, browser cache, etc. You shouldn't take your stats
> at face value, but they can be a useful tool in finding trends about the
> traffic to your website.

Only this morning I discussed the uselessness of terms such as "visits",
which are very subjective to their definition. The numbers likewise. I
think that this quote is intended to humour the user; nothing more. No-one
has yet found a better explanation for "Ads by Goooooooooooooooogle".
Maybe Google are just trying to create a buzz by embedding cryptic con-
tent. Look at a previous thread for example. UseNet could not help start-
ing a conversation about Google ana Braille.

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Pentiums melt in your PC, not in your hand"
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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http://iuron.com - next generation of search paradigms
.

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