Main Headings
Hits represent
the total number of requests made to the server during the given
time period (month, day, hour etc..).
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, remotes 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, Konqueror, 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
Isreal, 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 dialup and other customer access
points do not resolve to a name and are left as an IP address.
Response Codes are defined as part
of the HTTP/1.1 protocol (RFC
2068; See Chapter 10). These codes are generated by the web
server and indicate the completion status of each request made
to it.
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