How about default b2evo stats? I don't trust Google Analytics at all since many visitors block ADs and counters now, while b2evo logs every hit. For instance on my website Google Analytics detects about 40% less hits and visitors than b2evo does.

You can sort user agents by type e.g. "unknown"

Actually, I do use the default b2evo stats quite a lot, but it doesn't provide quite enough information to allow me take reasoned decisions about what I'm seeing. The detail is there in the log flies, but they're not in an overly friendly format.

I know I can filter on the 'unknowns' and it's that that's causing me to think I should try and handle things a little more rigourously, either using a robots.txt file (nothing there currently), or by rolling my sleeves up and attacking .htaccess.

At the moment, I'm actually not too concerned about the unneccessary consumption of resources I'm paying for (I'm well inside my limits), but of late, I am seeing an increase in genuine traffic (my fault, I keep posting stuff) and with that seems to be coming more of the garbage.

By all means, let me know if you think I may be trying to 'over' analyse this, but I'd feel more comfortable with looking to do something before it snowballs (assuming it ever does).

You do not have access to your webserver's log files, by any chance?

Yes I do, but reading a raw log file is not much fun, or is there something I can import it into you know of? I'm a bit bothered how far back they go though.

Well, there's [url=http://awstats.sf.net]AWStats[/url], but that's a Perl script (no GUI). So if you aren't afraid of some CLI fun... :)

I was aware of AWStats, but as yet I've not looked too closely at it. As it happens, another site I'm involved with uses it on the new web-space we've obtained, but as there's no content on there yet - the account was created last night - it'll be a while before I can do that. Guess I can take more of a look once we've migrated and got some traffic going through it.