Does Oh Dear count in your visitor statistics?

In most cases, the crawling we do for broken links and mixed content does not show up in your visitor statistics. But there are a few exceptions, so it's worth knowing how each type of analytics sees us.

Client-side analytics

Tools that track visitors with JavaScript in the browser (Google Analytics, Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics, ...) won't see the Oh Dear crawler.

We don't execute JavaScript while crawling, so these tools can't tag us as a visitor. No action needed on your end.

Server-side Google Analytics (Measurement Protocol)

Google Analytics also has a server-side API, where your backend (PHP, Ruby, Node, ...) sends events for each request. That approach will see our crawler and count it as a visitor, because the event is generated server-side before JavaScript would filter it out.

Most plugins and libraries that send GA events from the server support filtering by user agent. Exclude ours by filtering our User-Agent.

Server-side log parsers

Tools like GoAccess, AWStats, Webalizer, or Netlify's log-based analytics count visitors by parsing your access logs. They'll see our crawler as just another visitor.

The cleanest fix is to exclude our static IP addresses from the parsing software's input. Filtering by user agent works too.

If you're not sure which bucket your analytics fall into, send us a question and we'll help you figure it out.