watching hit counters on other web sites

[guy]

If you are doing research into (for e.g. a competing business) and want to
see how many hits they are getting on certain pages on their web site:

What are the general methods used for "spying" on their hit counters and
usage stats?
Is this legal?
Is this ethical?
How do you (and they) hide their hit counters from competitors?

Thanks

 

[Andrew Murray]

Usually corporate sites will have more complex statistics then just a hit
counter.....so this would only be available to the web owner or webmaster since
it is corporate information only of value to them.

I would ask nicely of the webmaster for the site you're researching and see if
they will give you the information, otherwise I suspect it is off limits else
they would have made it publicly available in the first place.

 

[Murray]

"Hit counters" are usually bogus, anyhow. The only really valid statistics
come from an analysis of server logs.

A hit counter is too easily fooled by repeatedly visiting the same page....