We sometimes receive questions about how to interpret the weekly and monthly web statistics reports that we send. We hope that this information sheet might help answer some of those questions about some of the parts of the various reports. These reports can be customized to contain only certain sections. So if you would like to add or delete various reports from your web statistics, just let us know.
Opening Page Of Report - this is the first page that you see when you visit the statistic's reports. It includes a graphic breakdown by month of the visits to your web site as well as links to individual monthly reports.
The Total Visits item of this report that probably is of the most interest as it is the most accurate representation of the number of different visitors you have had to your web site. Many of the other parts of this report refer to "requests" (commonly called "hits"). A "hit" primarily refers to the request made by a web visitor's browser to send it a file to display on the computer monitor screen. The file being requested in most instances is either a web page or one of the graphics or photos contained on the page. Note that the number of hits is not an accurate reflection of the number of visitors to your web site. For example, if a web page contains 10 graphics, the call for that page would create 11 "hits" in the statistic's report.
The total visits is the best indication of the number of visitors.
Terms:
This report gives a break-down of the Hits, Files, Pages, Visits, Sites, KBytes on a daily basis for the month selected.
This report gives a break-down of the Hits, Files, Pages, Visits, Sites, KBytes on an hourly basis for the month selected.
This top URLs report shows which of your web pages (URLs) were the most popular or most often visited during the month selected.
This top ENTRY page report shows which of your web pages (URLs) were the most often entry point to your web site during the month selected.
This top EXIT page report shows which of your web pages (URLs) were the page that visitors to your web site were visiting at the time that they exited your web site during the month selected.
The top SITES page indicates the ISP or IP address of the visitors to your web site during the selected month.
The top REFERRERS report shows which web site or search engine "sent" the visitor to one of the pages of your web site. From time to time, you may wish to review your web sites referrer list to see if various search engines with which your site was originally registered are still finding your web site. Occasionally search engines seem to lose some of their listings and it may be a good idea to re-register with them if you are no longer getting responses from them. Before re-registering with search engines (which some people do every 3 or 4 months), its a good idea to change something on your web site so that when the search engine does a byte comparison, it will see that something has changed and will reexamine your sites information. You can re-register your site yourself or Scott Web Service can do it for you for a fee of $20.00.
The SEARCH report shows the top search terms that were entered into search engine queries to find your web site. The visitor would have had to click on the link in the search engine to connect to one of your web pages.
The AGENTS report indicates which web browser (Ex. Firefox, Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc.) the visitor was using when visiting your web site.
The COUNTRIES report indicates the top countries from which your web visitors originated.