When Hosting through MAI WebDesign, you are provided
free web site statistics using "The Webalizer". If you purchased
our Linux web hosting you can access the stats by logging into you cpanel.
If you have window hosting through us, you can access
your statistics by typing in your domain name and /stats in the address
bar of your browser, i.e. www.yourname.com/stats
Terminology
Hits
Hits represent the total number of requests made to the server
during the given time period (month, day, hour etc.).
Files
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
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
Visits occur when a 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 URL's will not be counted
in the visit totals, reducing the number of false visits.
Pages
Pages are those URL's 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.
Kbyte
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 accessible
to the remote user, or results in an error (ie: 404 - Not found). URL's
can be of any type (HTML, Audio, Graphics, etc..).
Referrers are those URL's 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 URL's, 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 simply browsers. Netscape, Opera,
Internet Explorer, 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.
Second hand sliding doors.
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. A .BR domain
may actually be in Brazil, 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.
More information
Go to The
Webalizer home page
