Hallburn's Readership Stats Disproven!

Numbers Add Up To Deception

PutnamLIES.com has long accused Halburn of exaggerating his hit numbers and now we have proof and we'll tell you how he does it.

Our IT Engineer has laid out how the underhanded scheme works.

First, a couple of technical internet facts.

The technical definition of a hit is:
Each file sent to a browser by a web server is an individual hit.
The technical definition of a pageview is:
A pageview is each time a visitor views a page on your website, regardless of how many hits are generated. Pages are comprised of files. Every image in a page is a separate file. When a visitor looks at a page (a pageview), they may see numerous images, graphics, pictures etc. and generate multiple hits.

For example, if you have a page with 10 pictures, then a request to a server to view that page generates 11 hits (10 for the pictures, and one for the html file). A page view can contain hundreds of hits. This is the reason that we measure page views and not hits.

The conclusion here is that hits are not a reliable way to measure website traffic.

Our expert suspected that he was flooding each visitor with a ton of files to generate hits. It is in fact what he is doing!

Each visit to his site downloads at least 98 separate files to your computer, just on the start page!

The 98 Files that get loaded for every page

More simple math shows that the 80,000 readers that he claims in February actually means that you have to divide that 80,000 by 98. By doing that, you get 816 hits in February, divide that by 28 days and what he is really getting is more like 29 visitors a day. If the unsuspecting visitor happens to click into another section or area, there's another 98 or more hits which further reduces the actual count.

Now it's really easy to see where his numbers come from.

3/3 UPDATE:

After additional testing of Halburn's counter, it was determined that it DOES NOT register unique visitors. As we suspected, each page click and/or refresh is counting as a visitor, so a simple refresh script or bot can drive that number up like crazy. Plus, just like was showed with the hits, the way that his page is designed, with the counter on each and every page, every link that he posts that someone clicks on registers as a "visitor".

For instance, let's say Joe Blow goes to his site. His counter counts that as one visitor, each and every link to a story that gets clicked counts as an additional "visitor", each page refresh counts as a "visitor". It also means that each time he edits it or looks at it himself, it registers as a "visitor".

So as Halburn crows about his numbers, PutnamLIES.com reveals the actual truth.
They're fraudulent. He knows it, but uses the inflated numbers to dupe unsuspecting advertisers, most of which pay nothing anyway. They also help him stroke his overblown ego.

So to his 29 readers, please pass the word about PutnumLIVE.com, Putnam County's Fraudulent News Loser!!!

He shouldn't mess with the computer geeks.