FAQ: Parenthesized Items Omitted

There's a line above some of the tables in the statistics that says, "parenthesized items omitted." What does that mean?

Short Answer

It means that some items (probably useless ones) have been omitted from the table to make the information more useful--you can show them by choosing "show parenthesized items" from the Options menu.

Long Answer

Sawmill omits parenthesized items (i.e. any item that starts with "(" and ends with ")" from some tables to make the information more useful. For instance, most hits on a web site do not come directly from a search engine, (some come from links in other pages on the site, and others come from links on web sites that are not search engines), so usually the largest item in the search engines table would be on the item called "(no search engine)." Because hits from non-search-engines are not important in the search engines table, and because they dominate the numbers, making it difficult to compare "real" search engines, this item is omitted by default from the table. The way Sawmill omits it is by omitting all parenthesized items. Other examples of parenthesized items include the "(no search terms)" item in the search terms table, and the "(internal referrer)" item in the referrers table.

If you want to see all the hits in these tables, you can turn on parenthesized items in the Table Options page.