Can someone explain these stats for me please?

Hi all,

Quick "noob" kinda question.

RE: Webalizer Stats

I am volunteering some time for a community non-profit website...
http://www.sackvillenovascotia.ca

Our group needs to clarify something with respect to our stats
(As plain language as you can please) :-)

What does each of these mean?

VISITS = 2189
PAGES = 9,468
FILES = 30,054
HITS = 40, 345

February 2005

I guess one of the things we want to know is:

How many UNIQUE visitors did we have? Different IPs?

Also, is there a "relationship" between VISITS & HITS?

Thank you A LOT,

Mike

[Cricket]

There should be something indicating unique visitors, rather than just visits.

As to your other question:

Many folks confuse hits with actual visitors. Hits are NOT a good indicator of how many actual visitors you are receiving. You need to know exactly how many visitors you are receiving, how many of those are unique visitors, and of course how many pages they are viewing while visiting.

Define: hit
As used in reference to the World Wide Web, hit means a single request from a web browser for a single item from a web server; thus in order for a web browser to display a page that contains 3 graphics, 4 hits would occur at the server: 1 for the HTML page, and one for each of the 3 graphics. Hits are often used as a very rough measure of load on a server, e.g. Our server has been getting 300,000 hits per month. Because each hit can represent anything from a request for a tiny document (or even a request for a missing document) all the way to a request that requires some significant extra processing (such as a complex search request), the actual load on a machine from 1 hit is almost impossible to define.

cpmcnet.columbia.edu/computers/html/glossary.html

That HELPS.

Thanks.

Yes, there is an IP "section," we were just curious about which "category" gives
us the best idea of visitors to the site.

Mike

[J.D.]

Originally Posted by DomainLoot

VISITS = 2189

A visit is a series of consequitive HTTP requests (hits) from the same visitor (IP address). Each request in a visit is within 30 minutes (may be different) from the previous and the following requests.

Originally Posted by DomainLoot

PAGES = 9,468

A page is an HTTP request for a resource of such types as HTML, PHP, ASP, etc. Images, scripts and stylesheets are not considered as pages.

Originally Posted by DomainLoot

FILES = 30,054

Files are successful HTTP requests. So, if a request resulted in a 404 (file not found), it will not be counted as a file.

Originally Posted by DomainLoot

HITS = 40, 345

All hits, successful and not successful.

How many UNIQUE visitors did we have? Different IPs?

Many people confuse visitors and visits. A visitor (identified by an IP address) sends requests to a website, forming visits, as described above. A single visitor may visit your website twice and you will have one visitor and two visits.

J.D.

And, THANK YOU too J.D.

HELPFUL!

Mike

[neterslandreau]

If you are able to, check out AWStats. It provides a breakdown of unique visitors, total visits, pages viewed, hits recorded, bandwidth, plus a plethora of other noteworthy data. I've also found it is much easier to make sense of the reports than with Webalizer.

Thanks Neters,

I'll look into.

Mike

[cafedelbalkan]

Im using AWstats, it is probably one of the best statistics on the net, it has break down for each hit to which country your visit is coming from, plus it shows you all the pages that are visited and how many times they were visited.

If you want to see the break down go to

http://awstats.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/awstats.pl


all though my stats were not impressive

[J.D.]

Originally Posted by cafedelbalkan

all though my stats were not impressive

It is never a good idea to disclose your stats as it reveals too many details about the structure of your website. You should protect these pages and not allow anybody to view them without proper authorization. I would advise you to edit your post and replace your URL with this:

http://awstats.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/awstats.pl

J.D.

[cafedelbalkan]

Thanks JD, i haven't really thought about it before i posted it.

[buteknian]

thanks for more information. That helpfully for me