CPCWiki forum

General Category => News & Events => Topic started by: TotO on 12:20, 25 January 13

Title: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: TotO on 12:20, 25 January 13
What the f*ck !!!

[attachimg=1]

It's the first time that I see CPC Wiki no more number one CPC Topsites.
Who is the new #1 "for a day" ? :D

Spoiler: ShowHide
Congratulation Prodatron!
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Ciana on 12:24, 25 January 13
Probably these guys....

http://cpc.farnell.com/ (http://cpc.farnell.com/)

:D
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: remax on 13:06, 25 January 13
SymbOS

CPC-Topsites - Rankings - All Sites (http://cpc-live.com/topsites/)
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 13:22, 25 January 13
Yeah, noticed it myself. When that happens it's the SymbOS site because of a rush of MSX users when something is announced. 

But this time it's been going on for too many days, and the stats are very bumpy - like, from 1300 visits to 630 to 1700. It doesn't make much sense and, to tell you the truth, a little googling reveals nothing in the MSX scene (but I could be totally wrong). So, it is strange indeed! - not that it matters much of course :)

Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: MaV on 13:41, 25 January 13
MSX, is it?

I sense a "Microsoft-Japan-Korea" conspiracy against everything Amstrad ...
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 13:42, 25 January 13
The EU is not at its best...
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Bryce on 13:46, 25 January 13
His site was probably being attacked by Chinese hackers :D

Bryce.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 13:56, 25 January 13
He doesn't have a forum though, does he?
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: MaV on 13:59, 25 January 13
Quote from: Gryzor on 13:42, 25 January 13
The EU is not at its best...
Huh? I think I need to pull off my tin-foil-hat, because it must impede my ability to understand others. ;) (But then again I like my conspiracies. :D )
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 14:04, 25 January 13
Quote from: MaVQuote from: Gryzor on Today at 14:42:55The EU is not at its best...Huh? I think I need to pull off my tin-foil-hat, because it must impede my ability to understand others. (But then again I like my conspiracies. )
Well, you mentioned the American-Asian bloc, so...
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Bryce on 14:31, 25 January 13
Quote from: MaV on 13:59, 25 January 13
Huh? I think I need to pull off my tin-foil-hat, because it must impede my ability to understand others. ;) (But then again I like my conspiracies. :D )

Only take off the tinfoil hat in the basement AND when you're sure the black helicopters aren't overhead!

Bryce.

Posted from my mesh lined basement.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 14:32, 25 January 13
What about the lead apron?
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Bryce on 14:33, 25 January 13
They're after your thoughts, not your nuts! :D

Bryce.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 14:35, 25 January 13
Wot, no anal probes? They do it telepathically now?
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Bryce on 14:55, 25 January 13
That depends on where your thoughts are actually originating. :D

Bryce.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: MaV on 15:14, 25 January 13
Quote from: Bryce on 14:33, 25 January 13
They're after your thoughts, not your nuts! :D
Are you sure? They could be looking for fertile men in their 40s for their new breeding programs. The recent aliens certainly were ...
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 15:15, 25 January 13
So is it aliens hiking SymbOS's stats in search of breeding specimens?
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: MaV on 15:17, 25 January 13
Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? After all CPCwiki is not the no. 1 site for CPCs anymore.

Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 15:18, 25 January 13
...which would actually make it a better target for non-nerd, breeding specimens, but anyhow.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: MaV on 16:29, 25 January 13
Quote from: Gryzor on 15:18, 25 January 13
...which would actually make it a better target for non-nerd, breeding specimens, but anyhow.
I'm wearing a tin-foil hat, remember? :D

Seriously now, if google has a way of knowing the number of genuine accesses to a site, other sites may every once in a while even beat the wiki+forum.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 17:14, 25 January 13
[attachimg=1]

Seems that this special page is embedded on every website around the world :)

Spoiler: ShowHide
Reminds me on Pinky & Brain


But fine to see some motion in the toplist page.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 22:52, 26 January 13
Quote from: MaV
Seriously now, if google has a way of knowing the number of genuine accesses to a site, other sites may every once in a while even beat the wiki+forum.
Google doesn't have a way, of course.

Concerning our site, there's no way to know for certain all visits are relevant either. But I've blocked all major spam IP networks from China and elsewhere at server side, so they don't count in any analytics/stats tools. Best I can do to keep it as real as I can, we'll have to live with a degree of uncertainty outside that.

As far as movement goes, I think the differences are pretty big for a spammer to make a permanent change :)
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: AMSDOS on 00:01, 27 January 13
Was wondering if they might have a Facebook or Twitter account and are just linking Images from their site to those other networking sites?
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Zetr0 on 13:17, 27 January 13
it matters not what the stats say THIS is the No.1 CPC site for me!
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 14:39, 29 January 13
Awww that's great :)

Meanwhile something is really weird indeed with SymbOS. The month is not over and the site is already 6 times over its record (3000 vs 18000 visitors). It doesn't make any sense...
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: SyX on 16:38, 29 January 13
Well, the reason is more easy, i saw Prodatron talking about symbos in the AtariAge forums in this thread (http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/154520-new-gui-for-the-atari-8-bit/) (you can see in the page 82 a youtube link to cpc symbos and Prodatron commenting) and this forum generate a lot more traffic than cpcwiki.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 18:52, 29 January 13
Could be, timing is right, but... only a handful of replies in the thread since it was posted, none about it. Quite difficult to generate so much traffic from the *Atari*, not the MSC scene...??
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: SyX on 21:54, 29 January 13
Sure the MSX (Spain, Netherlands, Brazil and four cats in uk-france... the japanese msx people usually ignore everything not coming from japopayoland) visits can help, but the Atari (Yankiland, Latin America, Eastern Europe, UK, Germany and four cats in Spain) scene is much bigger.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: TFM on 22:36, 29 January 13
Like I remember, Prodatron will give a presentation about Symbos in Berlin someday this year, it's part of Mikroprofessors presentation at the university Berlin. Maybe this may explain the increasing number of hits.

However, nice to see that a CPC site gets so much traffic.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: ralferoo on 10:51, 30 January 13
And since the link was posted, we've all been to check it out too, thus inflating their stats more...  ;)
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 11:06, 30 January 13
@SyX: I don't think the MSX scene ignores SymbOS. When it was first announced for the MSX there was quite an uproar and a surge of interest! And, as I said, I don't see that much interest from that thread. Heck, the video has 350 views in all :D

@TFM: oh, don't get me wrong. I don't mind it the least if it gets more traffic than we do, if  nothing else it means there's much new interest in our community in general - it can only be good for everyone. What I'm troubled about is that if the numbers are not real it means the Top lists have not much meaning.

@ralferoo: oh yes, I know it got a few hits from me :D
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: TFM on 18:59, 30 January 13
Sure, you are right. The rankings are more or less close to reality for some sites. There are a lot of factors which are not integrated, so you're right, no need to overestimate them.


What counts in my opinion is the number of members (or active members) the forum here has. That tells a lot IMHO.



Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 17:23, 07 February 13
I improved the topsites code...
So cheating people will see this button on their page:
(http://cpc-live.com/topsites/images/cheater.png)
Perhaps this helps to avoid cheating...
Bastards!
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 17:27, 07 February 13
Hahaha!


Oh, just saw that the SYmbOS page now shows this. Not sure - is it certain it's cheating? I wouldn't think so...
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 17:28, 07 February 13
You wouldn't...
But I do.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 17:35, 07 February 13
The original code says:
[attachimg=1]

Prodatron's code is like:
[attachimg=2]

Where "rnd" changes each page view.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: TFM on 17:41, 07 February 13
How does that cheating work? Or if it is too secret, you must not tell.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 17:42, 07 February 13
Because he added a random value to the image url, the buffer is refreshed each time you call the image and not every 24h via the IP address of the visitor.
That's how Prodatron's cheat works.

Now he only needs to keep his fingers on F5
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: TFM on 17:42, 07 February 13
Ok, so what does this code do?
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 17:44, 07 February 13
It does nothing... Just generates a new image url every pageview.
This makes it possible to generate a new page hit everytime he refreshes the page.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: TFM on 17:47, 07 February 13
Ok, if I press refresh 1000 times then I get 1000 hits.... or I let a small script do that :laugh:
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 17:48, 07 February 13
He uses a PHP routine like this:
<?php
    $random 
rand();
    
$imageurl"cpc-live.com/topsites/button.php?u=Prodatron&rnd=".$random;
    echo 
"<a href='cpc-live.com/topsites/'><img src=".$imageurl.">";
?>
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: TFM on 17:55, 07 February 13
Smart idea ;-)
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 18:04, 07 February 13
Sure, the idea is smart.
But I find it has nothing to do with fair play.
Poor :(
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 18:54, 07 February 13
Let's take a deeper look:
Original page code says:
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="subs.js"></script>

So let's look into the "subs.js"...

**** snip ****

document.write('<center><!-- MSX Rating Code -->');
document.write('<a href="hxxp://wxx.caetano.eng.br/services/msxrating/toplist.php" target="_blank">');
document.write('<img src="hxxp://wxx.caetano.eng.br/services/msxrating/msxrating.php?id=105&rnd=' + Math.random() + '" border=0 title="Click here to view all MSX Rating sites!"></a>');
document.write('<!-- End of MSX Rating Code --><br> <br>');

document.write('<a href="hxxp://cpc-live.com/topsites/"><img src="hxxp://cpc-live.com/topsites/button.php?u=Prodatron&rnd=' + Math.random() + '" alt="CPC-Topsites" border="0" /></a></center>');

**** snip ****


Oh... So the CPC-Toplist is not the only page where he's cheating.
Congrats, Proda!
You can be very proud of yourself.

(Themis: I removed all http and www related strings because it doesnt work in CODE tag... Could you take a look, why?)
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 19:01, 07 February 13
This is really strange... it does look like cheating - would there be any other reason to randomize it? Why on earth did he?


let's see the code tag:

[url=http://www.cpcwiki.eu]CPCWiki[/url]



Oh yes, I see, it's the mod that automatically parses links; it doesn't respect the code tag. Interesting! I'll report it.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 19:04, 07 February 13
Quote from: Gryzor on 19:01, 07 February 13Why on earth did he?

Is like: As smaller your Pe**s, as larger your car ;)
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 19:05, 07 February 13
Ah, can we bring the wiki down to maybe 5 visits a day then? :D
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 19:08, 07 February 13
Sure we can...
Shall I help you?
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 19:10, 07 February 13
Nah, got no problem with my big... numbers.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 19:12, 07 February 13
Ok, lets be more serious...
I really don't know now:
Should I ban his account?
The "Toplist" page was never meant to be a platform like "My di** is larger than yours" but a platform to share as much CPC links as possible.

On the other hand he is pushing his page to maximum when he cheats.

So a "fix" for all would be: All apply the same cheat on their pages and that's it...

(No, emmm... Better lets fair play I guess)
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 19:14, 07 February 13
So that would be "my bot is bigger than yours"?
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: ralferoo on 22:35, 07 February 13
Quote from: Devilmarkus on 19:12, 07 February 13
So a "fix" for all would be: All apply the same cheat on their pages and that's it...
I guess it depends on what the metric is supposed to be. If it's unique visitors, he's clearly and knowingly cheating. To be honest, I'd be tempted to count the visit as rand()*1.9-0.9 if the rnd parameter is passed. That way his count will keep increasing and he'll be none the wiser, but won't go up as much. Or count it as 0 if rnd is passed.

It sounds like the current behaviour is supposed to check unique visitors per day, but relying on the browser doing via by an expiry time isn't great for that anyway. There are all sorts of reasons why something might count multiple times doing that, and also proxy servers can artificially reduce this count (which might actually be the reason for his cheating - when I did web development I've done a similar trick to force it to get unique data for multiple users behind a proxy).

Personally, I think a count per page is fair. If I look at 30 pages on the CPC wiki and 1 page on another forum, the CPC wiki deserves 30 times as many votes IMHO...
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 22:41, 07 February 13
It's designed to count unique users.
If each pageview would be counted, the CPCWiki would have thousands of visitors daily.

The new code I applied now avoids this.

Also sad: The code-owner reads this but does not write a statement...
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 22:51, 07 February 13
My new code works like this:
http://cpc-live.com/topsites/test.php?u=Testuser (http://cpc-live.com/topsites/test.php?u=Testuser) -> all is fine


http://cpc-live.com/topsites/test.php?u=Testuser&rnd=123456 (http://cpc-live.com/topsites/test.php?u=Testuser&rnd=123456) -> see what happens

http://cpc-live.com/topsites/test.php?u=Testuser&amp;abcde=fghijkl (http://cpc-live.com/topsites/test.php?u=Testuser&amp;abcde=fghijkl) -> same

http://cpc-live.com/topsites/test.php?u=Testuser&zxy=dumbass&cheat=true (http://cpc-live.com/topsites/test.php?u=Testuser&zxy=dubass&cheat=true) -> same

etc etc...
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 08:33, 08 February 13
@ralferoo: actually it also counts (and lists) total views as well, but ranking is done according to unique visitors. You're not wrong in what you're saying - some sites have more content than others - but then, maybe we should start counting by time-on-site? Start weighting page freshness? :D It gets complicated... unique visits does give a pretty good idea about how popular a site is.


No, it's not ideal, but then again it's just supposed to be a quick and dirty way to list sites on a specific subject (like the old Rings - anyone remembers those?). And I guess should be based on the honour system a bit, too.


And I'm completely puzzled as to why something like that would be done.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: db6128 on 12:48, 08 February 13
I'm more surprised by who's doing it, seeing as it's very different from the high standard of manners presented elsewhere.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 13:08, 08 February 13
Same here for the same reason. Hope we get to hear from him sooner rather than later... :'(
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Snake_Plissken on 14:20, 08 February 13
Where is the interest ?

It's not a contest.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 14:27, 08 February 13
It's a motivation, but certainly not a contest.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 16:15, 08 February 13
Neat: MSX Rating site reacted, too ;)

http://www.symbos.de/ (http://www.symbos.de/)
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 16:22, 08 February 13
Burned...?
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 16:34, 08 February 13
Well we added a simple routine in the image code:

// Avoid GET attacks
foreach($_GET as $k => $v){
     if ($k != "u" )    {
          header("Location: hxxp://yoururl.com/yourimages/cheater.png");
          die();
     }
}


You normally embed it with variable ?u=Username.
So if a bad variable is found (e.g. ?rnd= or an additional is found: &rnd=) *zzzaP Gotcha! ;)

Of course, when Proda returns the image code to default (as it should be) the toplist counter works properly and the real hits will be counted again...
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 14:08, 10 February 13
So lte's guess, which page is now on #1...
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Prodatron on 21:25, 10 February 13
Hi guys, I was away for a while (sorry, didn't read this thread before right now) and I am a little bit surprised what happend.

Regarding the "cheating":
@Devil: Just check your logfiles, this random number has been added years ago, it was always present in the code, since I added the Toplist-banner in the website (already in Kangaroo-times ;) ).

Maybe you know that I am coming from the online advertisement business, and so I know quite a little bit about this website analytic stuff. Adding a random number to a counting pixel is NOT cheating, you always do it for getting more precise numbers, as you prevent proxy and cache mechanisms from loosing counts.

Please note, that there are two values in website statistics:
1.) page impressions
2.) unique users/visitors

- Page impressions count each hit of a URL of a website. In this case it is the BEST way to add a random number to the pixel. Proxies and/or caches do not always follow HTTP expire times, and that's the reason why you should add random numbers to measure EVERY page impression.
- Unique users are counted either on cookie or on IP/session base. On each impression the system checks, if it's a known user. The best way is to use cookies with an expire time, but if they are blocked, you have to use the "fingerprint" methode, which includes the IP and the browser configuration.

I am really wondering why you don't know the difference between page impressions ("Total PVs") and unique users? Unique users ("Unique PVs" how they are called in your Topsites) are NOT affected by the random number which any statistic software adds to its counting pixels (if possible) because of the reason I mentioned above. It was quite funny to read, that you thought that pressing F5 would increase the Unique PVs. I am sure that you know quite well, that this would never increase the Unique PV counter!?

I have no idea where this explosion of the page views came from. I had this serveral times in the past (but yes, for shorter times) but this is NOT a robot (and not the random number methode you mentioned as it's the usual way for statistics and has been existing all the years) Why don't you check your logfiles?? The page views went down again, so I guess it was just another crazy post somewhere or whatever.
I can remove the random number (which will not affect the Unique User counter) to make you happy again. But I would more recommend to add such thing to each code to get more precise "Total PVs" numbers for each page (which ISN'T affecting the ranking, which is based on "Unique PVs"!).

CU,
Prodatron

Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 08:56, 11 February 13
Hello Prod,

Thanks for trying to clear the bad air!

A few weeks back some spammers tried to get on board here, and that inflated our stats. I blocked those IPs and the numbers went down again, but in your case it doesn't make much sense - not much a spammer can do on your site! I can see on obvious reason by googling it though, have you seen your site's analytics to see where the visitors come from?

Again, thanks for explaining a bit...

T
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 12:53, 11 February 13
Yes, thanks for explaining.
I actually removed the check and added a random number to my website's button, too.
Perhaps you are right.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 12:57, 11 February 13
I would like to point out that the original question remains - where does that traffic come from? It's going into its fifth week now, so I find it very unlikely to be 'valid' traffic. Unless we're missing something in which case - as I said earlier - it'd be a nice surprise.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Prodatron on 13:33, 11 February 13
Will try to find this out as soon as possible.
I remembered, that I integrated Googly Analytics on the homepage. So I logged in right now, but the strange thing is, that it shows only 1 impression for the whole last 4 weeks, so maybe the code is outdated.
Will try to get some logfiles from my hoster.

CU,
Prodatron

Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 13:43, 11 February 13
For me GA always shows numbers a bit higher than the TopSites stats :)


But since the visits seem to be still up high, just updating your GA code should be enough, even without the host stats!
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: ralferoo on 15:00, 11 February 13
Quote from: Devilmarkus on 12:53, 11 February 13
Yes, thanks for explaining.
I actually removed the check and added a random number to my website's button, too.
Perhaps you are right.
If you do that, you should also remove the expire time from the header or it will skew all the other results the other way.

I kind of agree with Prodatron as I've had to do similar things myself in the past to avoid over enthusiastic proxy servers (although it's always been within the domain of the web app concerned and not for statistics reasons). Really, you want to send a cookie with the image so that you can identify repeat visitors, but there's all sorts of stupid EU laws about cookies now that it's easiest not to, and to be honest, I'm not sure a client receiving a cookie from an online image would actually cache it, because normally you'd only be concerned with cookies from the page requests. Coupled with the image coming from a different domain, I'd full expect that to not work to identify unique visitors well.

But, personally, I think page impressions is a more useful metric anyway. As an aside, I've noticed that the news items pulled from Octoate.de also include a top-sites banner presumably from the RSS feed, so that's counting an impression without me even visiting the site - just from reading a page on cpcwiki! So, just clicking on one news item on cpcwiki and staying within cpcwiki gives his pages equal value to cpcwiki, even though I've spent ages on cpcwiki and not even looked at his site. I'm not saying it's wrong that he's done that, just that unique visitors is a less useful metric than page impressions.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Gryzor on 15:06, 11 February 13
Yeah - actually I discussed this very recently; the news bot is a mere rss fetcher, it doesn't read the contents of the feed. So if Octo includes the button in the feed then yes, his site gets an extra hit every time it is served from the wiki. But there's some kind of divine symmetry here :) As a reward, the better your articles the more will read you, either by visiting the site or by some other means!
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Prodatron on 15:36, 11 February 13
Quote from: Gryzor on 13:43, 11 February 13
For me GA always shows numbers a bit higher than the TopSites stats :)
But since the visits seem to be still up high, just updating your GA code should be enough, even without the host stats!
Yes, it depends on where you place the code, and it is also possible, that the GA-pixel response more faster than the TopSite-image.
Just saw, that my GA-code is completely outdated, I will add a new one now.

Quote from: ralferoo on 15:00, 11 February 13
If you do that, you should also remove the expire time from the header or it will skew all the other results the other way.
I don't think so. The important thing is, that the pixel/image is loaded ONCE everytime directly from the counting-server, when the user enters one page. This can be forced with a random-value. In this case you can measure the page impressions in the right way. The expire time is just an additional option to prevent caches/proxies from passing over the server.

Quote from: ralferoo on 15:00, 11 February 13
Coupled with the image coming from a different domain, I'd full expect that to not work to identify unique visitors well.
No that works as good as for pages. It's the way how Adservers are working. They are using the cookies of their own images/count pixels, and these cookies always come from the adserver domain. This also makes it possible to track the same user over different websites. The new EU rule forces the advertisement companies to provide opt-ins or opt-outs for the users, so that they have the possibility to prevent tracking themself.

Quote from: ralferoo on 15:00, 11 February 13
But, personally, I think page impressions is a more useful metric anyway. [...] I'm not saying it's wrong that he's done that, just that unique visitors is a less useful metric than page impressions.
Both are quite interesting values. You could decribe it like this:
- the number of Unique Users (visitors) show the "quality" of a website. A high number shows, that a lot of people are interested in this site.
- the number of Page Impressions in relation to the unique users show the "quantity" of a website. A high number shows, that single users like to surf a lot over the same site in the same session.

Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 15:59, 11 February 13
@Proda:
Well I need to apologize then.
Checked your site backwards to 2010.
Indeed there you already used the random number.
But I hope you can agree with me, that when a website stays for long time @ #1, I'll check deeper the code which is used, and when I stumble across a value which is not the standard code, I normally guess, that something is weird here....


Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: ralferoo on 16:10, 11 February 13
Quote from: Prodatron on 15:36, 11 February 13
I don't think so. The important thing is, that the pixel/image is loaded ONCE everytime directly from the counting-server, when the user enters one page. This can be forced with a random-value. In this case you can measure the page impressions in the right way. The expire time is just an additional option to prevent caches/proxies from passing over the server.
I got the impression that DevilMarkus was using it the other way, so the expiry time was set to 24 hours so that the browser would only request the image once every 24 hours. I know you can use it to force instant expiry too which is what I meant by removing the expiry time.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 16:14, 11 February 13
Well lets close this now.
The Topsites-Page is somewhat unimportant.
It should be a place where everybody should be able to share his CPC-website link.
Which page is on which place, really is not important.
But yes, the image should refresh every 24h.
I have no idea where this is designed in what header. I didnt code the topsites script. And I don't know PHP good enough to change that.
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Prodatron on 16:55, 11 February 13
Quote from: ralferoo on 16:10, 11 February 13
I got the impression that DevilMarkus was using it the other way, so the expiry time was set to 24 hours so that the browser would only request the image once every 24 hours.
If the pixel is only requested once every 24 hours, you will not be able to measure multiple page impressions of the same user at the same day. In this case the "Total PVs" column wouldn't make sense - it should always be the same like the daily (=24h) "Unique PVs".
Well, I have no idea, how the tracking methode of Topsites works in detail.

CU,
Prodatron

PS: Anyway that was quite an interesting (non CPC-related) discussion  :)
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 17:20, 11 February 13
Here's the button's code:
<?php
// Help prevent register_globals injection
define('ATSPHP'1);
$CONF = array();
$FORM = array();
$TMPL = array();

// Change the path to your full path if necessary
$CONF['path'] = '.';

// Connect to the database
require_once("{$CONF['path']}/settings_sql.php");
require_once(
"{$CONF['path']}/sources/sql/{$CONF['sql']}.php");
$DB "sql_{$CONF['sql']}";
$DB = new $DB;
$DB->connect($CONF['sql_host'], $CONF['sql_username'], $CONF['sql_password'], $CONF['sql_database']);

// Settings
$settings $DB->fetch("SELECT * FROM {$CONF['sql_prefix']}_settings"__FILE____LINE__);
$CONF array_merge($CONF$settings);


// Check id for backwards compatability with 4.x
if (isset($_GET['id']) && $_GET['id'] && !isset($_GET['u'])) {
  
$username $DB->escape($_GET['id']);
}
else {
  
$username $DB->escape($_GET['u']);
}

// Is this a valid member?  If not, exit to stop leechers
list($test) = $DB->fetch("SELECT active FROM {$CONF['sql_prefix']}_sites WHERE username = '{$username}'"__FILE____LINE__);
if (!
$test && (isset($_GET['u']) || isset($_GET['id']))) {
  exit;
}

// Is this a unique hit?
$ip $DB->escape($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'], 1);
list(
$ip_sql$unq_pv) = $DB->fetch("SELECT ip_address, unq_pv FROM {$CONF['sql_prefix']}_ip_log WHERE ip_address = '$ip' AND username = '{$username}'"__FILE____LINE__);

$unique_sql ', unq_pv_overall = unq_pv_overall + 1, unq_pv_0_daily = unq_pv_0_daily + 1, unq_pv_0_weekly = unq_pv_0_weekly + 1, unq_pv_0_monthly = unq_pv_0_monthly + 1';
if (
$ip == $ip_sql && $unq_pv == 0) {
  
$DB->query("UPDATE {$CONF['sql_prefix']}_ip_log SET unq_pv = 1 WHERE ip_address = '{$ip}' AND username = '{$username}'"__FILE____LINE__);
}
elseif (
$ip != $ip_sql) {
  
$DB->query("INSERT INTO {$CONF['sql_prefix']}_ip_log (ip_address, username, unq_pv) VALUES ('{$ip}', '{$username}' ,1)"__FILE____LINE__);
}
else {
  
$unique_sql '';
}

// Update stats
$DB->query("UPDATE {$CONF['sql_prefix']}_stats SET tot_pv_overall = tot_pv_overall + 1, tot_pv_0_daily = tot_pv_0_daily + 1, tot_pv_0_weekly = tot_pv_0_weekly + 1, tot_pv_0_monthly = tot_pv_0_monthly + 1{$unique_sql} WHERE username = '{$username}'"__FILE____LINE__);

// What button to display?
$rank_on_button 0;
if (
$CONF['ranks_on_buttons']) {
  
// See if rank is freshly cached.  If so, use cached value.  If not, calculate rank.
  
list($rank_cache$rank_cache_time) = $DB->fetch("SELECT rank_cache, rank_cache_time FROM {$CONF['sql_prefix']}_stats WHERE username = '{$username}'"__FILE____LINE__);

  
$current_time time();
  if ((
$current_time 1800) < $rank_cache_time) { // Cache every 30 minutes.  1800 is the number of seconds to cache.  Change it if you want.
    
if ($rank_cache && $rank_cache <= $CONF['button_num']) {
      
$rank $rank_cache;
      
$location "{$CONF['button_dir']}/{$rank}.{$CONF['button_ext']}";
      
$rank_on_button 1;
    }
  }
  else {
    require_once 
"{$CONF['path']}/sources/misc/classes.php";
    
$rank_by base::rank_by();

    list(
$hits) = $DB->fetch("SELECT {$rank_by} FROM {$CONF['sql_prefix']}_sites sites, {$CONF['sql_prefix']}_stats stats WHERE sites.username = stats.username AND active = 1 AND sites.username = '{$username}'"__FILE____LINE__);
    if (
$hits) {
      list(
$rank) = $DB->fetch("SELECT count(*) FROM {$CONF['sql_prefix']}_sites sites, {$CONF['sql_prefix']}_stats stats WHERE sites.username = stats.username AND active = 1 AND ({$rank_by}) >= $hits"__FILE____LINE__);

      
$new_rank_cache 0;
      if (
$rank <= $CONF['button_num']) {
        
$location "{$CONF['button_dir']}/{$rank}.{$CONF['button_ext']}";
        
$rank_on_button 1;

        
$new_rank_cache $rank;
      }
    }
    if (
$new_rank_cache) {
      
$DB->query("UPDATE {$CONF['sql_prefix']}_stats SET rank_cache = {$new_rank_cache}, rank_cache_time = {$current_time} WHERE username = '{$username}'"__FILE____LINE__);
    }
  }

  
// Stat Buttons
  
if ($CONF['ranks_on_buttons'] == 2) {
    require_once 
"{$CONF['path']}/settings_buttons.php";
    exit;
  }
}

$DB->close();

if (!
$rank_on_button) {
  
$location $CONF['button_url'];
}

header("Location: {$location}");
?>


Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 17:25, 11 February 13
What I did was putting this code first:
// Avoid cheating
foreach($_GET as $k => $v){
    if ($k != "u" )    {
        header("Location: [url=http://cpc-live.com/topsites/images/cheater.png"]http://cpc-live.com/topsites/images/cheater.png"[/url];);
             die();
    }
}

Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: ralferoo on 17:41, 11 February 13
Looking at the code, it's clear that it does attempt to record unique visitors by checking for same IP and date, but it also increases the page view count each and every request. So, I'd say Podatron's randomisation is fair enough... the unique daily visitor count will be fine with or without the random value. And the random values ensure that each page view is counted, if it's not there the browser or a proxy server might not re-request the image so the total page views count will be too low.

Adding this to the start should ensure that browsers and proxies don't cache it, achieving the same as everyone adding the randomness:
<?php header('Expires: '.gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s \G\M\T'time())); ?>
Title: Re: CPC Wiki is no more #1 CPC TopSite?
Post by: Devilmarkus on 12:19, 12 February 13
There's no reason to modify the header.
The image is processed through PHP so it doesn't stay in cache.

I made something similar on another website I created.
There an image is puzzled together from several components.
So, each time you see the image, it contains different pieces.

(Because it can contain nudity, I put it into a spoiler)

Spoiler: ShowHide
(http://biing.cpc-live.com/entrance/entrance.php)

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