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Web Stats Quick Definitions / Guide
- Main Headings
Hits represent the total
number of requests made to the server during the given time period (month,
day, hour etc..).
Many folks get confused here, regarding the terms "hits" and "visits". Typically, what folks are concerned with when reviewing their web site's traffic are "visits". The term "visits", as used here, tells how many times a person has visited your web site.
The term "hits", as used in the stats web page, means something else. It is really more useful for a person concerned with server performance. Briefly, and simplified, if you had a one page web site with two graphics in it, when someone visited it, it would count as three "hits" to the server. (one for the html page, and one each for the two graphics). So, when you look at "hits" as it is meant to be used here, it probably isn't really meaningful to you if you really care about how many people are looking at your site. (visits).
Files represent the total
number of hits (requests) that actually resulted in something being sent back
to the user. Not all hits will send data, such as 404-Not Found requests and
requests for pages that are already in the browsers cache.
Tip: By looking at the difference between hits and files, you can
get a rough indication of repeat visitors, as the greater the difference
between the two, the more people are requesting pages they already have cached
(have viewed already).
Sites is the number of
unique IP addresses/hostnames that made requests to the server. Care should be
taken when using this metric for anything other than that. Many users can
appear to come from a single site, and they can also appear to come from many
ip addresses so it should be used simply as a rough guage as to the number of
visitors to your server.
Visits occur when some
remote site makes a request for a page on your server for the first
time. As long as the same site keeps making requests within a given timeout
period, they will all be considered part of the same Visit. If the site
makes a request to your server, and the length of time since the last request
is greater than the specified timeout period (default is 30 minutes), a
new Visit is started and counted, and the sequence repeats. Since only
pages will trigger a visit, remote sites that link to graphic and
other non- page URLs will not be counted in the visit totals, reducing the
number of false visits.
Pages are those URLs that
would be considered the actual page being requested, and not all of the
individual items that make it up (such as graphics and audio clips). Some
people call this metric page views or page impressions, and
defaults to any URL that has an extension of .htm, .html or
.cgi.
A KByte (KB) is 1024 bytes (1
Kilobyte). Used to show the amount of data that was transfered between the
server and the remote machine, based on the data found in the server log.
- Common Definitions
A Site is a remote machine that makes requests to your
server, and is based on the remote machines IP Address/Hostname.
URL - Uniform Resource Locator. All requests made to a
web server need to request something. A URL is that something,
and represents an object somewhere on your server, that is accessable to the
remote user, or results in an error (ie: 404 - Not found). URLs can be of any
type (HTML, Audio, Graphics, etc...).
Referrers are those URLs that lead a user to your
site or caused the browser to request something from your server. The vast
majority of requests are made from your own URLs, since most HTML pages
contain links to other objects such as graphics files. If one of your HTML
pages contains links to 10 graphic images, then each request for the HTML page
will produce 10 more hits with the referrer specified as the URL of your own
HTML page.
Search Strings are obtained from examining the
referrer string and looking for known patterns from various search engines.
The search engines and the patterns to look for can be specified by the user
within a configuration file. The default will catch most of the major ones.
Note: Only available if that information is contained in the server
logs.
User Agents are a fancy name for browsers.
Netscape, Opera, Safari, etc.. are all User Agents, and each reports
itself in a unique way to your server. Keep in mind however, that many
browsers allow the user to change it's reported name, so you might see
some obvious fake names in the listing.
Note: Only available if that information is contained in the server
logs.
Entry/Exit pages are those pages that were the
first requested in a visit (Entry), and the last requested
(Exit). These pages are calculated using the Visits logic above.
When a visit is first triggered, the requested page is counted as an
Entry page, and whatever the last requested URL was, is counted as an
Exit page.
Countries are determined based on the top level
domain of the requesting site. This is somewhat questionable however, as there is no longer strong enforcement of domains as there was in the past. A .COM domain may reside in the US, or somewhere else. An .IL domain may actually be in Israel, however it may also be located in the US or elsewhere. The most common domains seen are .COM (US Commercial), .NET (Network), .ORG (Non-profit Organization) and .EDU (Educational). A large percentage may also be shown as Unresolved/Unknown, as a fairly large percentage of dial up
and other customer access points do not resolve to a name and are left as an IP address.
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