Audit Bureau of Circulation

The Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), which first made a name for itself by auditing the circulation numbers of newspapers, also audits Web site traffic.

Here's how it works:

The Web Site agrees to archive its Web server access log files for a period of not less than 30 days for the purpose of comparison and validation of the audit findings. The log files should include the data captured in the standard common log format plus the referrer variable and user-agent.

The Web Site must provide its own counting/accounting system and at a minimum, keep track of the number of page impressions per day. This information should be made available to ABC upon request.

The Web Site must provide a CPU, disk space, and bandwidth that would allow for up to two days data storage and transfer of the audit data given the Web Site's level of activity.

ABC makes available sample reports and the actual audit reports of a sampling of its clients on its Web site.