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Web Site Metrics $PRODUCT_NAME can count web log traffic in several ways. Each way is counted independently of the others, and each has its own advantages in analyzing your traffic. The different types are: Hits Hits are events on your website. A single web page can be made up of many elements - it might have 10 images and a Flash movie (making 12 elements including the page). Each element would translate into an event. So if you had just one person visit only this one page, $PRODUCT_NAME would show 12 hits on your site. Hits could also be that a page was downloaded, or a PDF, or it could be just an image (one of many) downloaded on your front page. So if there are 5000 events for a single day, then $PRODUCT_NAME will report 5000 hits. Your $PRODUCT_NAME Administrator can help you remove traffic that you do not want to see in your reports. Page views A page view is a request to load a single page on a website. Page views correspond to hits on pages. For instance, a hit on /index.html is followed by 10 hits on image files, 1 style sheet, and 2 JavaScript files, that appear in the page. This will count as a single page view and 14 hits -- only the landing on /index.html will count in the Page Views total. By default, page views are all hits that are not GIF, JPEG, PNG, CCS, JS, and a few others. Your $PRODUCT_NAME Administrator can configure $PRODUCT_NAME for your website and the types of files you have. Visitors Visitors correspond roughly to the total number of people who visited the site (see {=docs_user_chapter_link('user_visitor_totals')=}). Every visitor is tracked by their unique IP address. By default, $PRODUCT_NAME defines visitors to be "unique hosts" -- a hit is assumed to come from a different visitor if it comes from a different hostname (client IP). For example, if a single person visits the site and looks at 100 pages, that will count as 100 page views, but only one visitor. This is not the most accurate way of measuring visitors due to the effects of web caches and proxy servers. Some web servers can track visitors using cookies, and if your web logs contain this information, $PRODUCT_NAME can use it instead of hostnames (contact your $PRODUCT_NAME Administrator for more information). It is also possible for $PRODUCT_NAME to use WebNibbler™ Visitor Tracking, contact your $PRODUCT_NAME Administrator, or see The $PRODUCT_NAME Web Site for details. Bandwidth Bandwidth is the total number of bytes transferred. Bandwidth is tracked for every event that occurs, whether it is accepted as a "hit" or as a "page view". For log formats that track both inbound and outbound bandwidth, $PRODUCT_NAME can report both simultaneously. Referrers Referrers are "where visitors came from". For instance, if a visitor first does a search on Google and then clicks on your link in the search results then, when that visitor arrives at your site, the referrer is Google for that session and $PRODUCT_NAME will report Google as the referring web site in the Referrers view. For more detail, see {=docs_user_chapter_link('user_metrics_referrers')=} Sessions Several of $PRODUCT_NAME's reports deal with "session" information, including the {=docs_user_chapter_link('user_session_overview')=} and the "paths (clickstreams)" report. Sessions are similar to visitors, except that they can "time out." When a visitor visits the site, and then leaves, and comes back later, it will count as two sessions, even though it's only one visitor. To reduce the effect of caches that look like very long sessions, $PRODUCT_NAME also discards sessions longer than a specified time. The timeout interval can be changed, contact your $PRODUCT_NAME Administrator. |