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.
