Webalizer Quick Help
Main Headings
Hits represent the total number of requests
made to the server during the given time period (month, day, hour
etc..).
Files represent the total number of hits (requests)
that actually resulted in something being sent back to the user.
Not all hits will send data, such as 404-Not Found requests and
requests for pages that are already in the browsers cache.
Tip: By looking at the difference between
hits and files, you can get a rough indication of repeat visitors,
as the greater the difference between the two, the more people
are requesting pages they already have cached (have viewed already).
Sites is the number of unique IP addresses/hostnames
that made requests to the server. Care should be taken when using
this metric for anything other than that. Many users can appear
to come from a single site, and they can also appear to come from
many ip addresses so it should be used simply as a rough guage
as to the number of visitors to your server.
Visits occur
when some remote site makes a request for a page on your
server for the first time. As long as the same site keeps making
requests within a given timeout period, they will all be considered
part of the same Visit. If the site makes a request to
your server, and the length of time since the last request is
greater than the specified timeout period (default is 30 minutes),
a new Visit is started and counted, and the sequence repeats.
Since only pages will trigger a visit, remotes sites that
link to graphic and other non- page URLs will not be counted in
the visit totals, reducing the number of false visits.
Pages are those URLs that would be considered
the actual page being requested, and not all of the individual
items that make it up (such as graphics and audio clips). Some
people call this metric page views or page impressions,
and defaults to any URL that has an extension of .htm,
.html or .cgi.
A KByte
(KB) is 1024 bytes (1 Kilobyte). Used to show the amount of data
that was transfered between the server and the remote machine,
based on the data found in the server log.
Common Definitions
A Site is a remote machine
that makes requests to your server, and is based on the remote
machines IP Address/Hostname.
URL - Uniform Resource Locator. All requests made to
a web server need to request something. A URL is that something,
and represents an object somewhere on your server, that is accessable
to the remote user, or results in an error (ie: 404 - Not found).
URLs can be of any type (HTML, Audio, Graphics, etc...).
Referrers are those URLs that lead a user to your site or
caused the browser to request something from your server. The
vast majority of requests are made from your own URLs, since most
HTML pages contain links to other objects such as graphics files.
If one of your HTML pages contains links to 10 graphic images,
then each request for the HTML page will produce 10 more hits
with the referrer specified as the URL of your own HTML page.
Search Strings are obtained from examining the referrer
string and looking for known patterns from various search engines.
The search engines and the patterns to look for can be specified
by the user within a configuration file. The default will catch
most of the major ones.
Note: Only available if that information is
contained in the server logs.
User Agents are a fancy name for browsers.
Netscape, Opera, Konqueror, etc.. are all User Agents,
and each reports itself in a unique way to your server. Keep in
mind however, that many browsers allow the user to change
it's reported name, so you might see some obvious fake names in
the listing.
Note: Only available if that information is
contained in the server logs.
Entry/Exit pages are those pages that were the first
requested in a visit (Entry), and the last requested (Exit).
These pages are calculated using the Visits logic above.
When a visit is first triggered, the requested page is counted
as an Entry page, and whatever the last requested URL was,
is counted as an Exit page.
Countries are determined based on the top level domain
of the requesting site. This is somewhat questionable however,
as there is no longer strong enforcement of domains as there was
in the past. A .COM domain may reside in the US, or somewhere
else. An .IL domain may actually be in Isreal, however it may
also be located in the US or elsewhere. The most common domains
seen are .COM (US Commercial), .NET (Network), .ORG (Non-profit
Organization) and .EDU (Educational). A large percentage may also
be shown as Unresolved/Unknown, as a fairly large percentage
of dialup and other customer access points do not resolve to a
name and are left as an IP address.
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