Raw server logs
Web site statistics terminology
Top 20 Web Site Traffic Resources
One of the first things you want to know when you start your website is "How many hits to my website do I get"? What you
really need to know is "How many Page Views do I get"?
There are hits, requests, unique visitors & page views of your website.
Many hit counters, can be misleading and display grossly inflated statistics. Most hit counters only measure page views and if you
sit on a page clicking the "refresh" button, it will increment. 1000 refreshes = 1000 page views.
This is a very poor method of gaining an accurate view of web site traffic habits - you'll need a more comprehensive tool.
The following is an outline of different methods of web site statistics collection, plus associated statistics terms.
Raw server logs
One of the best methods of studying traffic, particularly if you wish to really narrow down on a certain page, browser, IP address or search engine referrals is to download your server logs.
A server log is basically just a text file that contains every request that has been made to your server. A request may be for a page, an image or any other element contained on your web site.
A server log entry looks something like this:
214.123.456.98 - - [27/Jan/2004:06:26:31-0800] "GET /logo.gif HTTP/1.1" "http://www.webmastercentre.com/" "Mozilla/4.0
(compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98)"
It all looks a little confusing, but it's really pretty simple when you break it down:
214.123.XXX.XX - This is the IP address of the person requesting an element from your site (x's will be displayed as numbers)
[27/Jan/2004:06:26:31 -0800] - The date and time of the request
"GET /logo.gif HTTP/1.1" - Is the file being requested and how it is being traansfered.
"http://www.webmastercentre.com/" - Where the request came from. This may be another web site or a search engine. If it
was a search engine referral, more often than not the search string will also be included.
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98)" - The user agent (browser or search engine robot) and operating system
of the person/computer requesting the file.
Studing the server logs can reveal many interesting trends and habits, but it's also very very very time consuming. Each visitor
to your site may generate hundreds, perhaps thousands of requests on each visit depending on the complexity of your site. The more graphics & files on each page generates more log entries
for each visitor.
Manually dissecting your server logs is great for in-depth studies, but you'll also want a tool for "at a glance" statistics.
There are many server log interpretation tools on the market. Many hosts include the statistics tracking tool called Webalizer.
You can download a free copy of Webalizer here. This free software is installed
on your server not your computer.
Also, while you'll have access to logs if you are commercially hosted (ask your hosting service about their location), webmasters
hosted on free servers usually won't have this privilege.
If you don't have access to your server logs, or are looking for to complement your own server log analysis, there are many remotely
hosted services available. Remotely hosted services are usually very simple to set up - simply copy and paste a few lines of code into your pages.
Learn more about these services here:
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Internet/Site_Management/Log_Analysis/
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Web site statistics terminology
What is a page view?
A page view means just that. It is an important consideration regarding the possibility of attracting high paying advertising. Advertisers what to know how many page vies they will receive.
What is a hit or request?
A hit is a file being requested and served from your web site. This can be a html document, an image file etc. etc. Web pages that contain a large number of these will return high hit scores.
Hits are of no use when analyzing your visitor demographics.
What is a unique visitor?
A unique visitor is what really counts. It is someone with a unique IP address who is entering your Web site for the first time that day. When they log onto the internet, they are assigned a
unique IP address.
Your IP address is an identifier and while you are using it, no one else on the Internet can utilize that particular set of numbers.
Their number is counted once.
So no matter how many times a visitor refreshes or navigates through your web site, they will only be counted once (usually for a
2-24 hour period). This is by far the more accurate way of analyzing web site performance.
What is a referrer?
A referrer is simply the origins of the visitor to your site, i.e. the last site visited and the page on that web site.
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Studying your web site traffic can take up a fair amount of time, but it is definitely worth it. Of course in amongst all this you
need to be able to make the time to carry out promotion, maintain linkages, develop new content etc etc etc. Running a large, content rich site is definitely not a part-time job!
Visit http://www.alouwebdesign.ca for free Internet marketing and Web Development articles and webmaster tools!
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