Basic question about awstats referrers

Discussion in 'Traffic Analysis' started by LongHaul, Dec 7, 2007.

  1. #1
    What are the two numbers next to the sites that send people to your site?

    Like:

    www.site.com 13 13
    www.sate.com 11 11
    www.sute.com 2 4
    www.sote.com 0 23

    And why are they different sometimes? (What's up with sote.com in my example?)

    I've looked around at the awstats but it's strangely tight-lipped.
     
    LongHaul, Dec 7, 2007 IP
  2. Jean-Luc

    Jean-Luc Peon

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    #2
    The first number counts the "referrers of the pages" and the second number counts the "referrers of the hits".

    Oversimplification, but clarification:

    In your example, 13 users came to your web pages coming from site.com. That's clear: 13 pages show a referrer from site.com.

    No user came from sote.com, but 23 users viewed a page of sote.com that shows an image from your web site. No user came on a page of your site (0 as first number), but there were 23 hits on files like images of which the referrer was sote.com.

    Jean-Luc
     
    Jean-Luc, Dec 8, 2007 IP
  3. Divisive Cottonwood

    Divisive Cottonwood Peon

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    #3
    I do use awstats, but only in conjunction with google analytics - I've noticed that awstats is prone to offering up strange mistakes in their stats.
     
    Divisive Cottonwood, Dec 8, 2007 IP
  4. Ladadadada

    Ladadadada Peon

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    #4
    This becomes most apparent when someone views the Google cache of one of your pages.

    You will see:

    - Google (cache) 0 8

    which means that the person retrieved 8 images or css files or js files from your website but nothing that you have configured as a "page".

    Awstats has never given me anything I would consider a "mistake" because I can always see what they were looking at in the raw log files. I also use Google analytics and it does a better job of identifying the real users but it can't track non-html files or anything retrieved by bots. I still need both stats packages to get a complete view of what my site is doing.
     
    Ladadadada, Dec 8, 2007 IP
  5. LongHaul

    LongHaul Peon

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    #5
    Thanks everyone, that does indeed make sense! I bought a banner ad on a site, and I guess they are using the gif I'm hosting.

    I use GA too, but awstats is so good for a quick glance update throughout the day.
     
    LongHaul, Dec 8, 2007 IP