Understanding Web Statistics
Can Increase The Bottom Line
One of the most important Web site statistics
is often the one most frequently misread by Web site owners
and unwary webmasters. If you're not careful, confusing "Hits" and "Visits" can
send you down the wrong road with your marketing efforts.
A hit is an inquiry from a machine and a visit is an inquiry
from a human. The difference is huge.
So why do you get hits?
One example of a hit is a request for information
from a search engine. This is how Google stores or caches
information for image and video searches.
Go to Google images (http://images.google.com)
and enter the search term "arrows."
(http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=arrows).
All the arrow graphics displayed are the result of Google
having (hit) a Web site and recording the information.
There are ways of asking or preventing
search engines from gathering data by using special Meta
tags. Some that are commonly used are:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
<
META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="-1">
If you write in ASP and want the same non-cache
effect, here's the header information:
<
% Response.CacheControl = "no-cache" %>>
<
% Response.AddHeader "Pragma", "no-cache" %>
< % Response.Expires = -1 %>
In addition, Netscape suggests the following JavaScript be
used in the BODY tag of
all pages that should not be cached:
onLoad="if ('Navigator'
== navigator.appName) document.forms[0].reset();"
So Visits are better?
It’s not that one is better than
the other. After all, increased hits and visits means you're
getting the attention of other Web sites, search engines
and people. The number of visits is the total number of visits
by all visitors over a given period of time. If I visit your
site and come back four more times, you should see one Unique
visit and 5 visits from me.
Sometimes a hit occurs as the result of
a human visit. These are the files requested by your visitor
including pages and images. If you have a page with four
images calling a Java Script file, the page will generate
a total of six hits.
So what good are Web stats?
Bragging about ones’ Web stats does
not do much good unless your phone is ringing off the hook
or your inbox is filled with new business. But it really
depends on what you're looking for and what you want to accomplish.
A quick review of my Web stats show me
some very useful marketing information such as:
10 Most viewed pages
View commonly used search terms resulting in a visit to my
site.
Drops and peaks in traffic over the year.
Let's presume you posted a page offering
a free download. It would be helpful to see how many times
users downloaded this file to judge the demand or popularity
of what your offering.
Other Webmasters or Web site owners use
Web statistics to determine:
Measure actual load on the server for diagnostics
and planning
Tracking of suspicious activity
Web Statistics
Glossary
Inclusion - An inclusion is a pre-filter that is used to
limit a site's statistics to only specific items of a log
file. Inclusions are typically used to restrict a site's
statistics to only one subdirectory of a larger parent site.
Keyword - A keyword represents a single word in the search
string text used by web users to get to your site.
Last Hit - Last Hit represents the date and time that the
visitor was last active on your site
New Visitors - A new visitor represents a visit by a computer
that has not yet been to the web site in the time period
of the report.
Page - The basic building blocks of any website. A website
generally contains a collection of different pages that are
accessible and viewable via a web browser. By default, many
web statistical programs consider the following extensions
to be pages: .ASP, .ASPX, .CFC, .CFM, .CFMX, .CFML, .CGI,
.HTM, .HTML, .IDA, .IDC, .JHTM, .JHTML, .JSP, .JWS, .MHT,
.MHTML, .MV, .PHP, .PHP3, .PHTM, .PHTML, .PL, .SHTM, .SHTML,
.STM, .WML, .XDL, .XHTML, .XML.
Page Views - A page view is a successful request for a file
on your web site that is considered to be a page. These usually
mean files with extensions such as .txt, .asp, .aspx, .php,
etc. Views generated as a result of an error (either a 400
or 500 level error) are not counted as actual views for your
site, and are kept separate from successful views.
Phrase - A phrase shows the entire search string text used
by web users to get to your site.
Platform - Platform represents the operating system that
the web site visitor is using. Some typical platforms are
Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP, and Mac OSX.
Rank - Rank indicates the position of the item when ordered
Referrer Host - The Referrer Host
represents the web site from which visitors to your site
came from. A value of "No
Referrer" represents a visitor typing your web site
directly into the browser, using a bookmark, or following
a link from an email client.
Referrer URL - The Referrer URL represents the exact web
page from which visitors to your site came from. A value
of "No Referrer" represents a visitor typing your
web site directly into the browser, using a bookmark, or
following a link from an email client.
Result Code - Result codes are returned by your web server,
and indicate whether or not resources were successfully downloaded
from your web site. Large numbers of 404 errors, for example,
may indicate a problem with your web site links.
Return Visitors - A return visit is counted when a computer
that has already been to the site before returns for another
visit.
Return Visits - Return visits represent the times when previous
visitors come back to the site again. A high percentage of
return visits to total visits indicates that your web site
is holding visitors' attention.
Search Engine - A search engine is a website whose primary
function is providing a search engine for gathering and reporting
information available on the Internet or a portion of the
Internet
Spider - A spider is an automated program that searches
and indexes web sites, usually with the intent of providing
information for search engines.
Unique Visitors - A unique visitor represents any number
of visits from the same computer. If a person returns to
the site again, a visit is counted, but a unique visit is
not.
User Agent - The User Agent string is sent by browsers to
identify them, the operating system they are running on,
and installed browser extensions. There are countless varieties
of user agent strings.
Visit Length - The number of seconds that a visit lasts.
On reports dealing with visit length, the average visit length
is calculated and shown for all visits. Visits length assumes
that the visitor stays several seconds after their last hit.
Visits - Visits represent the total number of times people
have visited your web site. A visit is counted whenever a
web site user requests one or more files from the web server.
If the user becomes idle for more than a certain amount of
time (usually 20 minutes), a new visit is generated when
they come back.
Web Site Path (Path)
- When a visitor moves from page to page within a site, they follow, or generate, a specific
path for their movement. For example, a visitor enters your site via the Default.asp page, clicks on a link to Product.asp
then proceeds to Order.aspx, and they finally leave via Thank_you.htm. Therefore, the path for this visit would look like: default.asp/product.asp/order.aspx/thank_you.htm.
Related Articles;
Researching
Your Web Site Popularity
About the Author
Rick Vidallon is President of Visionefx, a Web
design company based in Virginia Beach, Va. They provide services to national companies as well as small to medium
businesses throughout the United States.
Rick can be reached
at (757) 619-6456 or rick@visionefx.net.
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