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Analog Access ReportsDefinitionsThis section describes how the report defines its terms, and exactly what is counted in each category. It gets a bit technical at times but please persevere. We start with some basic definitions.
Report SectionsGeneral Summary ReportAs the title suggests, this is a very brief summary of the rest of the report. The Unwanted logfile entries figures can be ignored. There will usually be some unwanted logfile entries as the logfiles will contain information after the time period that the report is working on. Reports are usually set to report up to the end of the previous month so there may be logfile entries from the end of the previous month up to the time the report is generated. Monthly ReportA graph of the number of pages requested. It also lists numerically the number of requests and pages. We would expect an active site to have an increasing number of page requests each month. Weekly ReportSimilar to the monthly report but this time broken down into weeks. Each week runs from Sunday to Saturday. The last week will usually have less page requests as most analysis is done up until the end of a calendar month so the last week will have incomplete data 6 times out of 7. See the monthly report for a description of the graph. Weekly reports are not normally produced when there is over 6 months of data as the monthly reports give a better trend graph. We would expect an active site to have fluctuating number of page requests each week. The shorter time period than the month picks up such events like holiday periods when there is a likelihood of a drop in the number of page requests. Daily SummarySimilar to the previous reports but this time broken down into daily activity. Commercial sites would expect less requests at the weekend, but retail sites could have the peak day on any day of the week. Hourly SummarySimilar to the Daily Summary but this time broken down into hourly activity. They usually show that a web site is global and, therefore, is accessed 24 hours a day. Domain ReportLists the domains where requests originated. This gives some indication as to the global nature of the site, but remember that a .com could be anywhere in the world although most are in the USA. There will be an entry for [unresolved numerical addresses]. These are where the host refuses to tell us its name! [domain not given] means that the hostname did not contain a dot. [Unknown domain] means that it did contain a dot, but that the domain name was not one of over 200 domain that are known (e.g. .uk for the UK). Organisation ReportThis is more detailed than the Domain Report and lists the 3 level domain names for geographical domains. Some entries will be obvious who they are and many will be users who dial into an ISP. Some of these are:
Search Query ReportThis lists the search string that was entered by a user of a search engine. It gives clues as to what people are looking for and helps tailor the web site to those needs. If you feel that a search term is NOT being used, it could be that the particular search term does not result in your site being high enough in the search engines hit list for people to find your site. In that case we would need to tailor the site to improve the ranking of a page with the missing search term. Search Word ReportWhereas the Search Query Report lists the search string that was entered by a user of a search engine, this reports ranks the words used. It gives clues as to what people are looking for and helps tailor the web site to those needs. If you feel that a search word is NOT being used, it could be that the particular search term does not result in your site being high enough in the search engines hit list for people to find your site. In that case we would need to tailor the site to improve the ranking of a page with the missing search word. File Size ReportThis lists all files (pages and graphics) that are returned to the requester. A good mix is for over 50% of requests to be less than 10K so that dial-up users on analogue modems do not get a bad response. This usually equates to 35% of traffic (measured in bytes) being request of less than 10K and 65% of traffic being requests of more than 10K. Redirection ReportThis lists all files that did not return a file but told the browser to view another page. This typically occuurs when a program (cgi-bin) is run that redirects the browser to a new page (for example a Thank-you page). Referring Site ReportSee the definition of referrer which will explain what this report lists. The top spot is ALWAYS taken by the name of your site as most pages will cause a refer to one or more graphical images. The other domains in the list give some idea of what other sites know and link to your site. Browser SummaryThis is more of a techie's report but it does show that not everyone is using the latest software. The common browsers are:
Operating System ReportThis is more of a techie's report but it does show that not everyone is using Microsoft's Windows operating system. Unix, and may operating systems based on Unix, for example Linux, are likely to be more common in months to come as commercial organisations move to this superior Some Unix like operating systems - often reered to as *nix operating systems - include BSD, FreeBSD, Linux, HP/UX, AIX, MacOSX. Note that the latest MacOSX(10.5) is a Unix operating system while earlier versions were *nix. |
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