Reading webstats?

[T.J.]

Hi all,
I have just put a site online and are trying to work
out how to read my webstats.
I want to know roughly how many visitors I receive.
I included a site meter, but don't know if it is
accurate.
The site meter says I received over 800 visitors yesterday
and this is a copy from the webstats,

Successful requests: 12,638
Average successful requests per day: 12,689
Successful requests for pages: 3,802
Average successful requests for pages per day: 3,816
Failed requests: 470
Redirected requests: 2
Distinct files requested: 18
Distinct hosts served: 833
Data transferred: 36.895 Mbytes
Average data transferred per day: 37.050 Mbytes

Could someone give a rough idea of what the stats mean,
I assume the "Distinct hosts served: 833" is the amount of
visitors, is that correct?
TIA.

 

[brucie]

in post: <

I have just put a site online and are trying to work
out how to read my webstats.

Analog 5.32: How the web works
4. What you can't know.
You can't tell the identity of your readers.
You can't tell how many visitors you've had.
You can't tell how many visits you've had.
Cookies don't solve these problems.
You can't follow a person's path through your site.
You often can't tell where they entered your site, or where they found
out about you from.
You can't tell how they left your site, or where they went next.
You can't tell how long people spent reading each page.
You can't tell how long people spent on your site.
http://www.analog.cx/docs/webworks.html

 

[kayodeok]

Hi all,
I have just put a site online and are trying to work
out how to read my webstats.
http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/webstats/
http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/counters.html

Successful requests: 12,638

Number of files served? (html, htm, asp, php, jpg, gif etc)
Each request for a file is a successful request irrespective of what
file was served, therefore, if you have an html page with 5 jpg
files, 1 mp3 file, 2 gifs, that should be 10 requests (I included the
CSS file - assuming you have one)

HTTP Code 200ish

Average successful requests per day: 12,689
Successful requests for pages: 3,802

An HTML page could be made up of html, jpg, gif etc (a guess at how
many pages)

Average successful requests for pages per day: 3,816
Failed requests: 470

HTTP Code 400ish (403, 404)

Redirected requests: 2

HTTP Code 300ish

Distinct files requested: 18
???

Distinct hosts served: 833

IP Hosts that is xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Keep in mind that where I work, the IP is the same for all 700 staff
therefore, if we all hit your page in one day, this is still 1 unique
IP.
Some Counters have their own criteria for measuring distinct hosts,
therefore, if someone from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx visits now, that is 1
unique host, the counter may however be configured to "reset" in say,
30 minutes to 2 hours, therefore, if I visit 6 six times in 24
hours... you do the maths.
Keep also in mind that I am on dial-up and I get kicked off every 2
hours, and my IP is dynamic therefore, 2 unique IPs could be the same
person.
Keep also in mind that not all IPs have a human behind them, most are
simply bots crawling the web.

Data transferred: 36.895 Mbytes

If you have a 20 page web site with each page averaging 30kb with no
jpg files (all are simple html), then in 24 hours, with 100
successful requests, you have 100*20*30kb.
Keep in mind that not all pages are uniform and not all pages are
successfully requested and not all pages are requested and if you
have images, not all browsers request them and if you have css they
are generally cached per visitor.

Average data transferred per day: 37.050 Mbytes

Could someone give a rough idea of what the stats mean,

How many visitors did you have in one day? No idea

I assume the "Distinct hosts served: 833" is the amount of
visitors, is that correct?

No

 

[Richard]

Hi all,
I have just put a site online and are trying to work
out how to read my webstats.
I want to know roughly how many visitors I receive.
I included a site meter, but don't know if it is
accurate.
The site meter says I received over 800 visitors yesterday
and this is a copy from the webstats,

Successful requests: 12,638
Average successful requests per day: 12,689
Successful requests for pages: 3,802
Average successful requests for pages per day: 3,816
Failed requests: 470
Redirected requests: 2
Distinct files requested: 18
Distinct hosts served: 833
Data transferred: 36.895 Mbytes
Average data transferred per day: 37.050 Mbytes

Could someone give a rough idea of what the stats mean,
I assume the "Distinct hosts served: 833" is the amount of
visitors, is that correct?
TIA.

Basically. You had 833 visitors. All of whom saw the main page.
Some ventured off into other pages.
And many of those so called "hits" could be from search engines and do not
reflect true visits.

A site just installed is in no way gonna get 12,000 hits the first day.

What will tell the truth, is the bandwidth. Excuse me, usage meter.
If that shows extremely low then there is no way you had 12k hits.

 

[Steve Pugh]

Basically. You had 833 visitors.

Rubbish. The server recieved requests from 833 different hosts, that
may or may not be the same as the number of visitors; and most likely
is not the same.

All of whom saw the main page.

No way of telling that from the above unless the particular Analog (I
recognise what an Analog report looks like and the above is the
summary section of one) configuration used to generate that report was
configfured to only count requests for the home page. However, the
full report will include a breakdown of which files have been
requested.

And many of those so called "hits" could be from search engines and do not
reflect true visits.

Search Engines count in the Distince Hosts as well and so are included
in the 833 figure.

A site just installed is in no way gonna get 12,000 hits the first day.

Why not? What's the domain name? What's the subject matter? How much
has been spent on advertising? Was the launch the feature of a press
relaease? If the homepage has 20 images on it then 12,000 requests
might be just 600 visitors.

What will tell the truth, is the bandwidth. Excuse me, usage meter.
If that shows extremely low then there is no way you had 12k hits.

Where do you get the phrase 'usage meter' from? Anyway the bandwidth
is up there for you to see, just under 37 Megabytes. And search
engines use bandwidth as well so what exactly is your point?

Steve

 

[T.J.]

<Snipped>
Thank you to all who replied.