Wikimedia Traffic Analysis Report - Google requests

Monthly requests or daily averages, for period: 8 Nov 2012 - 8 Nov 2012 (last 12 months)
000 ⇒ k
 

 This analysis is based on a 1:1000 sampled server log (squids)

 See also: Requests by destination or by origin / Methods / Scripts / User agents / Skins / Crawlers / Op.Sys. / Mobile devices / Browsers / Google / Country data / Traffic trends, and notes about reliability of these data

 
This report shows all requests to Wikimedia servers where a Google server of service was involved in any way, be it the GoogleBot crawler or FeedFetcher collector scripts that run on Google servers, or a user that follows a link from a Google Web or Google Desktop search results page, or from Google Maps or Google Earth etcetera.

Technically speaking three fields in the squid log records are checked for this: client ip address, referer header and user agent header. A request can originate from an ip address which has been registered by Google and/or it can carry a referer tag that tells us a user clicked a link on a Google results page and/or it can carry an agent string that mentions a Google application which can reasonably be assumed to be genuinely Google's. See bottom of page for further details.


In total Google was somehow involved in 3.3% of daily external page* requests

Google referred to our sites, through its services including search, maps, and Google Earth, 21,165,000 page views per day, representing 1.0% of our external page requests.

Including all of its different search crawlers and services hosted on its servers, Google itself requested another 46,301,000 page pages per day, representing 2.3% of our external page requests.

* = mime type text/html only

In order of request volume

Requests originating from a Google ip address
ServiceTotalPagesImagesOther
Other-
Wireless-
GoogleBot-
Translate--
FeedFetcher--
Web search--
Total
 
Requests originating from elsewhere
ServiceTotalPagesImagesOther
GoogleBot?-
Web search-
Other-
Mail--
Wireless--
Translate-
Toolbar-
Earth--
Total
 
Top level domains
.com-
.th--
.id--
.mx--
.in-
.de--
.es--
.tw--
.it--
.fr-
.cl--
.jp--
.vn-
.pl-
.br-
.nl--
.co--
.ru--
.hk--
.be-
.tr-
.cr--
.org--
.ca-
.ua--
.pe--
.ec--
.au--
.at-
.ar--
.kr--
.fi--
.hr-
.sk--
.ro--
.ch--
.bg--
.iq--
.pt--
.ba--
.cz--
.za--
.eg--
.ph--
.dk--
.bh--
.sv--
.se--
.uk--
.il--
.rs--
.tn--
.sg--
.kh--
.si--
.by--
.lt--
.md--
.af--
.pa--
.hu--
.ve--
undefined-
Total

In alphabetical order

Requests originating from a Google ip address
ServiceTotalPagesImagesOther
Wireless-
Web search--
Translate--
Other-
GoogleBot-
FeedFetcher--
Total
 
Requests originating from elsewhere
ServiceTotalPagesImagesOther
Wireless--
Web search-
Translate-
Toolbar-
Other-
Mail--
GoogleBot?-
Earth--
Total
 
Top level domains
.af--
.ar--
.at-
.au--
.ba--
.be-
.bg--
.bh--
.br-
.by--
.ca-
.ch--
.cl--
.co--
.com-
.cr--
.cz--
.de--
.dk--
.ec--
.eg--
.es--
.fi--
.fr-
.hk--
.hr-
.hu--
.id--
.il--
.in-
.iq--
.it--
.jp--
.kh--
.kr--
.lt--
.md--
.mx--
.nl--
.org--
.pa--
.pe--
.ph--
.pl-
.pt--
.ro--
.rs--
.ru--
.se--
.sg--
.si--
.sk--
.sv--
.th--
.tn--
.tr-
.tw--
.ua--
.uk--
.ve--
.vn-
.za--
undefined-
Total
 

IP ranges: known ip ranges for Google are 64.233.[160.0-191.255], 66.249.[64.0-95.255], 66.102.[0.0-15.255], 72.14.[192.0-255.255],
74.125.[0.0-255.255], 209.085.[128.0-255.255], 216.239.[32.0-63.255] and a few minor other subranges

Agents: as for genuine agent strings: too many crawlers indentify themselves as 'GoogleBot' to take this at face value. They are accepted as genuine Google crawler requests only when the ip address matches a known range (see above). Other records that mention GoogleBot are counted as GoogleBot? (question mark, as this may include partners, like DoCoMo). However when the agent string mentions Google Desktop or Google Earth this is always accepted

Service: the service name is based on the agent string (plus for GoogleBot check for ip address, see above), if this is inconclusive it is based on the referer string.

Here is detailed breakdown per service of indicators that pointed to Google (total ≥ 3)
 
ServiceTotalOriginating from
Google ip address
Referer mentions
Google url
Agent mentions
Google service
Earth--Y
FeedFetcherY-Y
GoogleBotY-Y
GoogleBot?--Y
Mail-Y-
Other--Y
Other-YY
OtherY--
OtherY-Y
OtherYYY
Toolbar--Y
Translate-Y-
TranslateYY-
Web search-Y-
Wireless--Y
WirelessY-Y

Top Level Domain 'undefined': requests with top level domain 'undefined' are nearly all requests from anonymous ip addresses (crawler and other services)

Note: averages below 1 are always rounded up to 1

Errata: WMF traffic logging service suffered from server capacity problems in Aug/Sep/Oct 2011.
Absolute traffic counts for October 2011 are approximatly 7% too low.
Data loss only occurred during peak hours. It therefore may have had somewhat different impact for traffic from different parts of the world.
and may have also skewed relative figures like share of traffic per browser or operating system.

From mid September till late November squid log records for mobile traffic were in invalid format.
Data could be repaired for logs from mid October onwards. Older logs were no longer available.

In a an unrelated server outage precisely half of traffic to WMF mobile sites was not counted from Oct 16 - Nov 29 (one of two load-balanced servers did not report traffic).
WMF has since improved server monitoring, so that similar outages should be detected and fixed much faster from now on.

Generated on Sat, Nov 17, 2012 5:42
Author:Erik Zachte (
Web site)
Mail: ezachte@### (no spam: ### = wikimedia.org)
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