Interpreting Your Stats Page

Your Stats Page keeps track of information, such as how many visitors (hits) your site is receiving, any problems (failed requests), and how much traffic (kilobytes) your site is producing. Some of the information is useless, and some of the information is only useful when comparing it to other information. For example, you might read your Request Report and check to compare how many hits your / (index.html) page is receiving compared to other pages on your site (indicating people look at your home page and then go immediately off your site). You might also find that people are entering your site through a 'back door,' in other words, not from your home page.

Keep in mind that there is no 100% true accurate way to count your actual traffic. If someone reloads a page, these reloads will be counted as new hits. Repeat visitors count as new hits as well. In other words, the system does not track unique visitors and only counts hits.

You have two stats pages: the current month and last month.

URLs

• Current month's stats: www.yourdomain.com/stats.html
• Last month's stats: www.yourdomain.com/stats.lmonth.html

Note: The character l in the filename stats.lmonth.html is the letter L not 1; it stands for last month.

The following will help you interpret your stats page. It seems confusing at first, but once you get used to using this powerful page, you will find the stats page to be a powerful metering tool.

Summary (Top of page information).
The following are in the summary found at the top of the stats.html page.

• Total successful requests
  Explanation: Tells how many actual requests have been processed for your site. A request comes by the act of someone pulling up your page(s) on their browser. A request for one page might invoke several other requests, such as requests for the graphics that appear on that page. So if you have a page with six graphics on it and someone pulls it up, it will 'tick' off six requests; one for your page and five for the graphics.

• Average successful requests per day
  Just as it says, this is your average successful requests per day.

• Total successful requests for pages
  This refers specifically to requests for your pages (.html, .htm files) and does not include graphics, which, as explained above, count as more requests.

• Average successful requests for pages per day
  The daily average of successful requests for your pages (.htm, .html files).

• Total failed Requests
  This shows requests that time out, as well as images and pages that did not come up when requested. A large number of these might indicate that your images are too large and slow to load.

• Total redirected requests
  Indicates that the page came up via a different URL (such as a META tag redirecting the visitor to the new page).

• Number of distinct files requested
  This is exactly what it says; it indicates how many different files were requested.

• Number of distinct hosts served
  How many different domains your visitors have come from.

• Corrupt logfile lines
  Has to do with the function of a script that writes to your log file, and does not indicate any problems with your site.

• Total data transferred
  This number is what your billing is based on. You can tell if you are in your monthly limits by checking this number.

• Average data transferred per day.
  Indicates your daily data transfer.

Daily Summary
The Daily Summary will give you a picture of which days most of your traffic is coming in. This is a good gauge, depending on what audience you are targeting with your site. Are you targeting businesses that are typically open Monday through Friday? This graphical representation will give you a picture of when your visitors are on your site.

Hourly Summary
The Hourly Summary is a good way in guessing what time zone(s) the majority of your visitors are viewing your site from. Are the most visits coming between 5 AM and 2 PM? This indicates that your visitors are either early risers, or are viewing from the East Coast. 4 PM to 12 AM? Maybe a band of insomniacs are looking at your site, but more than likely, they are in European countries.

Domain Report
The Domain Report indicates how many different domains your visitors are coming from to visit your site.

Directory Report
The Directory Report shows you how much traffic is going to each directory, with the directory receiving the most traffic on top, in descending order.

The Request Report
The item you probably want to find out about the most is at the very end of this report: "How many hits am I getting?" The top information is deceiving; to get a more accurate picture of how many visitors you are receiving, scroll down to the Request Report section. You will be presented with a table headed with #reqs: %bytes: file. The files are listed by number of requests, starting with the file receiving the most hits on top, and descending to the file receiving the least amount of requests.

A request is merely a term for someone bringing up a page in his or her browser. This one 'click' from a user may invoke other requests--requests for graphics which are on that page, and so forth. You may notice that your graphics (.gifs and .jpgs seem to be getting more hits than most of your pages The most common explanation for this phenomenon is that these particular graphics are used on multiple pages.

The request report will show you how visitors are entering your site. For example, most want their visitors entering through the 'front door' (the home page, index.html). Is your home page at the top of that request list (receiving the largest number of requests?). In the request report, your home page is the one listed as:

/

If this is at the top of the list with the most requests, this is an indication that visitors are entering your site via the home page. Are they coming in through a 'back' door somewhere? You might be linked from somewhere else to that particular page or directory if that is the case.