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Website Traffic Analysis

• Which are the most important concepts of traffic analysis, and what are the best ways and tools to measure site traffic and analyse web server logs? What are the "official" definitions for visitors, hits, page views, unique visitors and other important concepts for traffic analysis? Where can I find articles about this subject?

• Answer:

  Hi Kischi ! Website statistics are not always easy to dig through, especially raw data logs, so many webhosts provide one or more software packages to analyze the stats. Even then, many people don't understand the value of the information they're looking at, nor what helps and what doesn't. Software like Webalizer and/or Analog offers a way to look at the statistics, but what really is important? Starting with your question about the definitions: * Visitors ========== Whenever a request is made to the server from a given IP address (site), the amount of time since a previous request by the address is calculated (if any). These figures can sometimes be skewed. For instance, if the a site's stats are timed to time out after a set amount of time, but the visitor returns or takes longer on the site, it can be shown as two visits. The same applies if a visitor is on a site before and after midnight, it can be counted as one visit on the first 'day', and one on the second. So, there is bound to be some small deviance from the number of unique visits or unique visitors shown. * Hits ====== A hit is basically any file served by a server. So if you view a web page with five graphic files, the number of "hits" (or files served) would be six for that page. One for the page itself plus five for the five graphics, equal six 'hits'. * Page Views ============ A page view is, well, a page view. How many times has that particular been viewed? If one visitor returns to that page 10 times, that's one visitor and 10 page views. * Unique Visitors ================= See the definition above. The problem, again, can be at what point, what criteria, is used to determine that even a returning Visitor becomes a unique Visitor. "Official" Definitions ====================== There are no real "official" definitions, but they are generally defined along the loose definitions I mentioned above. Howver, Netlingo has a set of definitions for you here: * Unique Visitors - - http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/unique_visitors/ * Page Views - - http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/page_view/ * Hits - - http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/hit/ There is an alphabetical bar across the top of each of Net Lingo's definitions pages which lets you look up the words you may be looking for. Webalizer's Definitions ======================= If your host offers Web statistics usingi Webalizer, their definitions have been reproduced on this SA Texas Communication Network site: - http://www.satexas.com/support/domainhosting/webalizer_defs.phtml Analog's Definitions ==================== If your host offers Analog as a statistics analyzer, their definitions can be found here: - http://www.analog.cx/docs/reports.html Which statistics are important? ============================== What's important? It depends on where you are coming from with relation to your statistics. Small business owners usually want to know what page their visitors land on, which pages they visit, which page the leave the site from. Running a 'special offer' or want to know how a particular ad campaign is going? Then you'd be interested in the visitors to that page, and where they are coming from (in other words, which referral measures work best). I have managed to locate a book and a few articles on Web Stats, but most of the information is obviously tied into Website marketing. The book is "Web Site Stats: Tracking Hits and Analyzing Web Traffic" by Rick Stout which is available on Amazon. Some of the articles I found: * "Who's Counting? Ratings Data is Beginning to Stream In", by Lawrence Pintak 01/04/01 - http://channelseven.com/newsbeat/2001features/news20010104.shtml * "Analyzing Consumer Activity Leads to Sales", By Carol King, January 22, 2001 - http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/4_566841 * "Evaluating Website Statistics", Performance Marketing Group - http://www.pmarketing.com/images/sitebacker.pdf * "Mining For Gold ...In Your Web Traffic Logs", CyberSpeaker - http://www.cyberspeaker.com/mininglogs.html * "Beyond Hits", CyberSpeaker - http://www.cyberspeaker.com/beyondhits.html Search Strategies Used ====================== - definitions: website statistics - articles: website statistics Hope this helps figure out what all those stats mean. Best regards, Serenata