Understanding Your Webalizer Reports

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Understanding Your Webalizer Reports

Browser

The server also records what browser a visitor used. This is useful in designing your site. If you see that no one is using older versions of Netscape, you might feel comfortable implementing some of the newer features available with new generations of Netscape and IE. One item to note with browser count, if you have many of your visitors coming from AOL you may want to stay with a more simplistic design or make alternate pages for AOL viewers.

Hits (also see Request)

A "hit" is recorded when someone downloads some type of information from a web site. This could be an html file, a picture, a sound file, etc. A single hit is recorded for each file downloaded. For example, a web page with 3 pictures on it would count as 4 hits when a user views it. (There would be one hit for the HTML file, then three hits for each picture on the page.) A hit is referred to in our logs as a "Request". So when you see this line in the "Request Report":

>232: 0.18%: 3366: /yourdirectory/

That means you had 232 hits and had 3.3 Megabytes of data downloaded. Those 3.3 Megabytes are 0.18% of the amount of data downloaded off the entire server analyzed.

Needless to say, bragging about "hits" doesn't mean much. A site can have only ten visitors yet records hundreds of hits. A good way of determining a more realistic view of your site's success is to watch the page requests. This will only keep track of the number of web pages viewed not the graphics.

HTTP status codes

Webalizer recognises four categories of request, based on the HTTP status code of the request. For a more detail explaination of HTTP status codes click here.

First, successful requests are those with HTTP status codes in the 200's (where the document was returned) or with code 304 (where the document was requested but was not needed because it had not been recently modified and the user could use a cached copy). Sometimes the logfile line doesn't contain a status code. These lines are also assumed by Webalizer to be successes.

Redirected requests are those with other codes in the 300's, indicating that the user was directed to a different file instead. The most common cause of these requests is that the user has incorrectly requested a directory name without the trailing slash. The server replies with a redirection ("you probably mean the following") and the user then makes a second connection to get the correct document (although usually the browser does it automatically without the user's intervention or knowledge). The other common cause of redirected requests is their use as "click-thru" advertising banners.

Failed requests are those with codes in the 400's (error in request) or 500's (server error). They come about for a variety of reasons, but the most common are when the requested file is not found or is read-protected.

Errors

Error reporting is also logged in our program. The line that refers to "Total failed requests" lists the number of times a person typed in the wrong URL to a web page, or when a link was broken when the user clicked on it, etc. It is mostly just basic navigation errors. "Corrupt logfile lines" refers to just that, corrupt lines that were ignored. This is entirely normal and inherent in web server software.

Hosts

A host is a computer. When someone visits a web site their computer sends us the hostname (but *not* the e-mail address). This is recorded and is listed in the logs along with the requests and bandwidth each one serviced from your site. This is useful for those interested in marketing your web site. (Note: Hosts, as most items on the Internet, can be faked by advanced users wishing not to reveal where they are surfing from.)

Directories & Requests

The directory report lists the directories accessed by users. When a user visits a directory by typing in the url http://www.yoursite.com/yourpages/directory it is listed here.

The request report gets down to the nitty gritty of things. It shows the amount of times each file was downloaded. This allows you to extrapolate many things, including which pages are most popular, which pages may be bookmarked by visitors, etc.

Page

A page is simply a request that is a web page. Remember, requests can be: web pages, graphics, videos, sound clips and more. The number of requests or hits a site receiving is very different then the number of visitors or pages a site gets.

Request

When a web browser wants to view a something, it sends a request to the web server. The web server then sends the requested item (could be a web page, an image, a file to download) to the browser.

Referrer

Referrer is where a visitor came from. For instance, if your site is listed on Yahoo, and someone clicks on your listing, the web server logs that you came from Yahoo. The referrer would be "http://www.yahoo.com/". If a visitor followed a link to reach a page, the referrer will be the previous page. In the case of a graphic on a page, the referrer will be the page containing the graphic. When you see several references to your own sites pages this simply means that someone has clicked from your home page for instance to another page on your Website. So the referrer is logged as your home page instead of an outside source. How they got to your homepage is logged also of course.

Limitations and Conclusion

Remember these reports are not a completely accurate portrayal of web site activity. Through the use of proxies some people do not actually visit your site. A proxy is a web browser that takes your site, downloads it to their own hard drive, and then serves it to customers directly from their drive. When this happens extra hits are not recorded on your site, and will not be reflected in the logs. For example, if 100 customers of an ISP view your page through that proxie's ISP, it will only show up as a single request on your logs.

Also, just because you have x amount of hosts visiting your web site, doesn't mean that x amount of people did. The same person could have visited your web site from three different computers. Maybe one at work, one at home, and one at school. That will show up as three hosts, yet will be only one person. Similarly, one host can represent more than one person. For example, a computer in a computer lab at an university can be used by hundreds of students in a single day. If ten of those students visit your web page it will show as only a single host, because they all used the same machine.

Needless to say, tracking your web site's activity is an art in and of itself. Many books have been written on it and even more software programs which claim to have all the answers. Please visit the "How The Web Works" section to learn a little more about what happens when somebody connects to your web site, and what statistics you can and can't calculate. We will be adding a online library of recommended books on the subject to our Support Archive soon.

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Windows 95 A & B List of Files How to Extract Cab Files A & B

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