I'm curious to know what bad personal experiences you've had in conducting surveys to dismiss them completely. When was the last time you ran a survey and why did it fail to deliver the results you were expecting?
Edit: Analysing server logs can tell you what people did, not why they did it. At least in my experience, surveying users directly about their motivations and needs has been very enlightening and resulted in a direct increase in sales.
thanks for the feedback on the tone. See constructive suggestion in my reply to awenger.
one comment on the survey vs. server log comparison: Survey also doesn't give you "why" on user behavior; it only give you what the user "thinks" the reason is. For certain occasions it provide false insights. Server logs are facts, you won't get why but you get concrete observations.
I agree that users don't give perfectly true answers, but discarding their answers as 100% useless or false is silly. You can corroborate survey results with server logs. You don't have to view them in isolation.
Also, please can you take it easy on the tone? See this discussion - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4396747
Edit: Analysing server logs can tell you what people did, not why they did it. At least in my experience, surveying users directly about their motivations and needs has been very enlightening and resulted in a direct increase in sales.