Communications 4NH

General Terminology

Accesses (also called "hits")

The number of times that files were served to clients (browsers) by the web server. This is also referred to as "hits". When someone says they get "thousands of hits", all it means is how many time files were served to clients. It is NOT an indication of the number of visitors to the web site. For example, if you have 50 small images on your home page and one visitor views that page, you will get 51 hits. If you do not have any images, you will get one hit. (BTW, each one of our several web servers can serve over 1,000,000 files per day.)

Bytes

The number of bytes served to clients (browsers) by the web server. This is most important if the number of bytes served per month exceeds your current allocation based on your class of service. It also gives you an indication of the "cost" of your web site relative to the value delivered to the viewer. If the GIF and JPG bytes are thousands of time higher than the actual HTML pages, you are making your viewer wait a long time to get a small amount of information.

Unique sites served

The number of "machine names" that accessed your web site. In most cases, this is a "dial up" account name that could be used by many different individuals. In other cases, the machine is a "proxy server" in which case numerous individuals could be served the pages via this one "machine". In some other cases, the machine is a "robot" that is cataloging your web site.

Unique documents served

The total number of different documents served to clients from your web site. This includes HTML files, image files, CGI accesses, and any other types of files you may have. If you have 100 documents on your web site but this figure does not usually go above 20, that means you have a lot of pages that no one views. This could be caused by not having links to those pages, or because viewers lose interest. One of the biggest reasons for viewers to lose interest is that you have too many graphics and people do not wait for them to load.

Unique trails followed

This shows you how many different paths were taken in browsing your web site. A simple web site with single tier linking would have a small number. A more complex site with many cross linked pages could have a large number. The interpretation of this statistic for your site could be quite complex and is beyond the scope of this document.

Total visits

This is one of the most valuable items in the statistics report. This tells you (approximately) how many different people have visited your web site during the reporting period. Because of the way web servers work, it is impossible for this to be an exact number. However, it is usually fairly close. This figure is FAR more important than the number of hits. This is the one statistic that shows the exposure that your web site is getting. Most ISPs do not provide this important information.

Referrers

This is the second most important piece of information in the reports. This tells you where your hits come from. If you see a lot of search engines high on the list, you have done a good job with your page designs, META tags, and search engine registrations. If you pay others for links, you should see them in this list. If you do not see them, you are wasting your money. If you have "link exchange" types of banners (which we do not recommend), you should see hits from the link exchange organization. If you do not see hits referred from these sites, get rid of the banners.

Proxy Server

This term is not used in the reports. However, it is important to understand what this is. When some people browse a web site (such as via AOL), their browser is not actually connecting to the web server. The request from their browser goes to a proxy server, and the proxy server makes the request to the web server. In many cases, if the proxy server has already served the page to someone else and has it "cached", the request never goes to the web server at all. Therefore, there are some visits to your web site that may not be recorded at all in the logs because the requests were never made.

Statistics Main Page

History from . . .

The starting date through the ending date for all statistics pages in the entire report.

Skip to weekly reports

Jumps to list of current Weekly Reports.

Totals Bar Chart

Shows the total number of accesses ("hits") to your web site by reporting period, including a breakdown of several types of files. The term "access" means each time a file is served to a client.

Item: Overall Hits

Total number of hits for all file types. The breakdown shows the figures by number of files served (accesses), and number of bytes. The "Total" is the total number during the period shown in "History from", the "Averages" are for the same period, and the "Latest" show the most recent period, usually one week.

Item: Home Page Accesses

A porion of the "Overall Hits", specifically showing just the hits to your Home Page.

Item: GIF Accesses

A porion of the "Overall Hits", specifically showing just the GIF image files served.

Item: JPG Accesses

A porion of the "Overall Hits", specifically showing just the JPG image files served.

Reports for the Year . . .

Link to the page that has the list of individual reports for your review.

Home Page

Link to your Home Page.

Weekly Report Page

Week of . . .

The starting date through the ending date for week shown on this page. The week starts on Sunday at 12:00 Midnight.

Overall Statistics: Unique Sites Served

The number of "machine names" that accessed your web site. In most cases, this is a "dial up" account name that could be used by many different individuals. In other cases, the machine is a "proxy server" in which case numerous individuals could be served the pages via this one "machine". In some other cases, the machine is a "robot" that is cataloging your web site.

Overall Statistics: Unique documents served

The total number of different documents served to clients from your web site. This includes HTML files, image files, CGI accesses, and any other types of files you may have. If you have 100 documents on your web site but this figure does not usually go above 20, that means you have a lot of pages that no one views. This could be caused by not having links to those pages, or because viewers lose interest. One of the biggest reasons for viewers to lose interest is that you have too many graphics and people do not wait for them to load.

Overall Statistics: Unique trails followed

This shows you how many different paths were taken in browsing your web site. A simple web site with single tier linking would have a small number. A more complex site with many cross linked pages could have a large number. The interpretation of this statistic for your site could be quite complex and is beyond the scope of this document.

Overall Statistics: Total visits

This is one of the most valuable items in the statistics report. This tells you (approximately) how many different people have visited your web site during the reporting period. Because of the way web servers work, it is impossible for this to be an exact number. However, it is usually fairly close. This figure is FAR more important than the number of hits. This is the one statistic that shows the exposure that your web site is getting. Most ISPs do not provide this important information.

Accesses per Day

A bar chart and graph showing a breakdown of traffic to your web site on a daily basis. This also shows the peak demand on the web server in the Bytes per Second category. Again, there is a table showing a breakdown by Overall Hits, Homepage Accesses, and by certain file types. The "Accesses" column shows the number of times files in each category were served (also known as "hits").

Top 20 of ?? Documents

This is quite important in that it shows you the most viewed documents on your web site. In most cases, the top item will simply be a "/", indicating your default home page. It is important that the most viewed documents do not have a lot of graphics so that they will load fast. If you think some documents should have more "hits", check to see if the links to those pages are clearly marked and are on pages that load quickly.

Visits Report

The important values in this section are the "Total visits", "Average visit", and "Longest visit". Total visits shows you the approximate number of people that actually viewed your site during the week. Average visit in the average length of time a person spent viewing your site.Longest visit is the most time one person spent viewing your site. (If you are doing a lot of work on your site and testing it frequently, you might be the longest visitor :-) The 5 Example Visits are just randomly selected visits that show the referrer and the path taken through your site for the specific visit. The next section "Top 5 of ?? Document Trails" is more important than the example visits.

Top 5 of ?? Document Trails

This shows the most commonly used paths that people take when viewing your web site, starting with the referrer (if any). This information can be used to develop changes in the way you present links to pages or sections of your web site. When you make those changes, you can see the results in this section. If you want to observe effects of your changes on a one week basis, it will be best if you make changes on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning. Otherwise, ignore the values in the week you make the changes and examine the following week.

Top 10 of ?? Referring URLs

Again, one of the most important sections of the Statistics Report. This shows you how people find your web site. The "URL" column shows the page that told people of your web site. This is most often a search engine. You will learn by experience that some search engines, such as Yahoo, actually have several different URLs. If you have some form of "link exchange" banner on your web site, look for their URL in this table. If it is not there, you are advertising someone else's site for nothing. If you pay for a link, make sure you see that you are getting enough referrals to make it worth your money. If you do not see search engines, you do not have your pages designed correctly, or do not have your pages registered properly.

Top 10 of ?? Sites

The number of "machine names" that accessed your web site. In most cases, this is a "dial up" account name that could be used by many different individuals. In other cases, the machine is a "proxy server" in which case numerous individuals could be served the pages via this one "machine". In some other cases, the machine is a "robot" that is cataloging your web site.

Top 5 of ?? Documents Not Found

In general, there should never be any items in this table. If there are, most likely you have broken links on your web site.

Top 10 of ?? user agents

This is for the more sophisticated web designer. It usually shows the "class" of web browser used to access your site, the actual browser, and the operating system. The information shown here comes directly from the web browser request packet. There is no real standard for this information so it could vary widely.

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