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 gauge 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.
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: These codes are generated
by the web server and indicate the completion status
of each request made to it. (These are defined as
part of the HTTP/1.1 protocol [RFC 2068; See Chapter
10])
