Studying Web Traffic -
Methods and Statistics Terminology
Gathering information
on web site traffic is a crucial element in the planning and
further development of any web site. When studying your web site
traffic, it is also important to be able to understand the
associated statistics terminology.
A question that webmasters are often asked is "how many hits does
your site get?". You then need to ask "do you mean hits, requests,
unique visitors or page views?".
Many hit counters, such as the FrontPage 2000 component can be a
little misleading and display grossly inflated statistics. This
particular hit counter only measures page views and if you sit on
a page clicking the "refresh" button, it will increment.
As the FrontPage and similar counters only reports numbers, it 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 statistics
collection, plus associated statistics terminology defined.
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:
216.154.251.84 - - [14/Mar/2003:08:04:14 -0800] "GET /animate.js
HTTP/1.1" "http://www.sfldfkfdk.com/" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;
MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"
It all looks a little confusing, but it's really pretty simple
when you break it down:
216.154.XXX.XX - This is the IP address of the person
requesting an element from your site (x's will display as numbers)
[14/Mar/2003:08:04:14 -0800] - The date and time of the
request
"GET /index.htm HTTP/1.1" - The file being requested and
the method of transfer.
"http://www.sfldfkfdk.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 NT 5.1)" - The
user agent (browser or search engine robot) and operating system
of the person/computer requesting the file.
The manual study of server logs is can reveal many interesting
trends and habits, but it's also 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.
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, but
the good ones are generally very expensive. Many hosts include
statistics tracking with their hosting packages, but I have found
many to be inaccurate or don't update often enough.
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://www.tamingthebeast.net/misc/free-traffic-monitoring.htm
Web site statistics terminology
Webmasters and site owners tend to use different terminology in
relation to statistics and it's important to be able to
differentiate between the terms - especially if you are wanting to
attract advertisers to your site. Advertisers will want to know
exactly what your traffic rates are, where it comes from and what
your visitors come to your site for.
What is a hit or request?
A hit is the result of a file being requested and served from
your web site. This can be a html document, an image file, an
audio track etc. etc. Web pages that contain a large number of
elements will return high hit scores. Hits are of very little
consequence when analyzing your visitor demographics.
What is a page view?
A page view means just that. Once again, it is not a true
indication of how many different people are visiting your web
site, but it is a good way to judge how "sticky" (the ability to
retain the interest of visitors) your web site is and is an
important consideration regarding the possibility of attracting
high paying advertising.
What is a unique visitor?
A unique visitor is where stats really count. It is someone
with a unique IP address who is entering a Web site for the first
time that day (or some other specified period). When you log onto
the Internet, you are assigned a unique IP address, or if you are
a cable modem user your IP address is usually "static", meaning
that it never changes.
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. Your number is counted once, usually for a 2-24 hour
period, dependent upon the tracking software.
So no matter how many times a visitor refreshes or navigates
through your web site, they will only be counted once for the
specified time 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.
Gauging web site traffic
When you divide the number of page views by the number of
unique visitors, this can give an excellent indication of whether
traffic is transient or is staying on your site. If the average is
one page or under, you can be pretty sure that there is something
on your pages that is scaring people off. Perhaps the load time is
too slow or your opening statement is inappropriate. Remember that
due to bandwidth considerations, those first few elements that
display as your page is loading may be the deciding factor as to
whether a visitor waits around for the entire page to load.
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!
Further learning resources:
The best FREE web site traffic monitoring services:
Identifying search engine spiders
Michael Bloch
Taming the Beast
http://www.tamingthebeast.net
Tutorials, web content, tools and software.
Web Marketing, Internet Development & Ecommerce Resources
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