Webalizer Web Site Statistics

The Webalizer is a fast, free web server log file analysis program. It is used widely by web hosts worldwide as it is relatively easy to implement and the price is attractive. Webalizer statistics are however, an example of how difficult it is to be highly precise with unsophisticated tools. The figures produced by Webalizer are best always treated as trend indicators rather than specific or absolute measurements.

More details of each statistic is below:

To view your site statistics your web hosting company will advise you how to access the figures. This may be via a control panel or via a separate URL. For those hosted with the Dataview facility at iServe, you have been provided with a URL (web address), 'userid' and 'password' to allow access to the Webalizer statistics for your website.

The first Webalizer screen to come up is the hit statistics overview page which shows the "daily averages" and "monthly totals" of your hit statistics. At the bottom of the screen you will see "summary by month" - by clicking on a specific month link it will take you to the details for that month. Below the graphs it looks like this sample -

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Hits

Browser requests for files. By itself this figure is largely meaningless (although a lot of people quote it), as a "file" includes every image, page, downloadable etc. Hits represent the total number of file requests made to the server during a given time. The difference between visitors and hits

Files

The number of all files actually sent to visitors' browsers including pictures, downloadable files etc. Not all hits (requests for files) result in files being sent from the server (see tip below). Files represent the total number of hits (requests) that actually resulted in something being sent back to the user.

Tip:

By looking at the difference between hits and files, you can get an approximation of the number of repeat visitors; the greater the difference between the two, the more people are requesting pages they already have cached in their browser (have viewed already).

Pages

As the name suggests, Pages are hits that result in pages being sent from the server to browsers. 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.

IP addresses (Internet Protocol Number)

A unique number consisting of 4 parts, separated by dots, e.g. 192.168.0.1 Every machine that is on the Internet has an IP number. Many machines (especially servers) also have one or more Domain Names that are easier for people to remember.

Sites

This gets (even more) technical. Sites is an IP identifier of a visitor to your site. This can be used as an indicator as to what part of the world visitors came from (see also "Countries" below) and who visits a site the most. This does not necessarily mean an individual, as an ISP can give the same IP to two different users and a different IP to the same visitor on different sessions or visits. 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 gauge as to the number of visitors to your server.

URL - Uniform Resource Locator

Internet address of an object. Requests made to a web server are made using a URL to identify the object requested. An object (file) may be of any type, HTML, audio, graphic, etc.

Visits

Number of visits to a web site. Synonym: Session. 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.

Unique Visitors

Unique Visitors or Unique Sites are the number of unique IP addresses/hostnames that made requests to the server.

As many visitors can appear to come from a single site or IP address, or one visitor from many sites or IP addresses, this can be a slightly inaccurate report. However, it does have the advantage of eliminating some repeat visitors who distort the Visits figures such as search engine robots and crawlers who can bump up the Visits figures materially, particularly if the Visits figure is low.

On most Webalizer detailed statistics pages you will find a table headed something like "Top 30 of 1616 Total Sites". The 1316 in this case is the number of Unique Visitors (same figure as at the top of the statistics page) and the table shows a breakdown of this figure for the period.

Referrers

Referrers (or Unique 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 pages, since most HTML pages contain links to other objects such as graphics files. The page called "\" in your statistics is your homepage (which lives at siteroot usually). 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.

Kbytes

This shows the amount of data that is transferred from your site to visitors ie. pages or pictures etc. 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.

URL's

The names of the different pages that visitors can access on your site. Usually ordered by most popular pages first.

Entry & Exit Pages

An entry page is the page where visitors entered your site. This can be via a bookmark, search engine, or direct from your homepage. Conversely, the exit page is the page from which visitors departed. 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.

Search Strings

These are the search phrases typed into search engines. Search Strings are obtained from examining the referrer string and looking for known patterns from various search engines.

User Agents

This is a fancy name for browsers. Netscape, Opera, Konqueror, etc.. are all User Agents, and each reports itself in a unique way to your server. This category also includes search engine robots (eg Googlebot) and crawlers.

Countries

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.

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