Using visitor statistics to monitor your site

 

Log Files

Raw log files listing every request made to your Website. Every time a visitor tries to access your Website, certain information is added to your log file.

Web analysis tools, such as Visitor Statistics, use log files to generate reports showing where visitors are coming from, how often they return, and how they navigate a site.

What Visitor Statistics track

• Files: The number of files that have been requested (downloaded) from your site during the reporting period.
• Websites contain a collection of computer files sent by a remote computer (The web server) to the client (Web browser) as the client requests them. Files (the outgoing response to a request) include all viable Web file formats, such as HTML files (.html), graphics files (.gif, .jpg or .png), Adobe Acrobat files (.pdf), Macromedia Flash files (.swf), Microsoft Word files (.doc) ASP files (.asp), etc.

The relationship between hits and files can be thought of as incoming requests and outgoing responses.

• Hits: The total number of requests that were made to the site during the reporting period.

Any request made to the Web server is logged as a hit. The request can be for files, such as an HTML page, graphic image, audio file or CGI script, or queries made by search engine spiders.

• KBytes: The amount of data in kilobytes (KB) sent out by the server during the reporting period.

Though not exact, this figure is a relatively accurate representation of the amount of outgoing traffic the server had.
Note: 1 KB = 1,024 bytes, not 1,000 bytes.

• Pages (Also called Page Views): The number of pages viewed during the reporting period.

Hypertext mark-up files (.html or .htm) and files that generate HTML documents (for example, .asp .cgi). are considered pages, with the definition of a page varying by server. By default, our servers define as a page any file with one of the following extensions:

• .htm*
• .cgi
• .chtml
• .shtml
• .phtml
• .php*
• .pl
• .py

( * represents any character)
Some people consider the pages total to be the number of pure hits. In other words, it is a more accurate indication of the traffic your site receives.

• Referrers: The record of the URLs from which a request was made during the reporting period.
  
  Example: A user follows a link on www.websiteA.com to your site. The URL of the linking page (www.websiteA.com) is the referring URL or referrer.

• Search Strings: The record of all unique search strings obtained from the end of the referrer URLs during the reporting period. Search strings are the words entered by users into a search engine or directory to locate information.

• Sites: The record of all unique IP addresses that made requests to the Website during the reporting period. The Internet is a network of computers that can share files via a standard protocol. Each computer on the web has a unique IP (Internet Protocol) address, which identifies that computer and differentiates it from other computers. Each request made to the server comes from a unique IP address or site.
  

  
  NOTE: The number of sites does not represent the number of individual users or
  individual computers accessing the Website. Due to factors such as multiple people working on the same network, it is impossible to determine a unique visitor total using
  only logs and HTTP protocol. Still, this number can be used as a close approximation.
  
  Example: Private NetworksWebHosting connecting to the Internet via a router
  use a single IP address (the router IP address) for security purposes, so one site
  can represent multiple users
   

• URLs: The number of unique URLs at your site accessed during the reporting period. The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) or Web address identifies a file's location on the Internet, such as a Web page or an image on the page. The information is sent to the Web server whenever a user follows a link on a Web page or types a URL directly into the Web browser's address bar.
  
• User-Agents: The record of the unique programs and devices used to access your site.
  
  User agents include:
  

  • Web browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox
  • Search engine spiders, such as those from Yahoo! and Google
  • Download managers
  • Text-to-speech and similar readers

• Usernames: The record of usernames that accessed your site during the reporting period.
  

Log files record access by authorized users (any user with access to password-protected Web resources, such as site members or administrators).

• Visits (Also called Sessions): An attempt to measure the number of times visitors go to a Website during the reporting period.
  As page requests are made to the Web server from sites, the server records the IP address and the time which elapses between requests from that IP address. If the time between requests exceeds 30 minutes, Web servers log a new visit for that site.
  
  
  Example: Someone visits a page at your site at 1:00 p.m. and then requests another page at 3:00 p.m. The server records two visits.
   

  
  NOTE: Due to the HTTP protocol limitation and other factors, the number of visits should not be taken as absolutely accurate. Instead, it should be considered a very close estimate.
   

Response Codes

Response codes (also called status codes) are the coded results of a server's attempt to understand and satisfy a request. Web server responses indicate whether a Web object (Web page, graphics file, CGI script, etc.) was successfully retrieved or executed and, if not, the reason for the unsuccessful result. Unsuccessful results are also referred to as server error codes.