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Understanding Webalizer Website Traffic Analysis
The first step is to not rely on a "hit counter" (ESPECIALLY the "free" hit counters. I have seen more malware on servers from free hit counters than from any other source). Counters are misleading and basically useless for determining the success of your website.
"Webalizer" is offered by a lot of web hosts. You may have the option of installing additional server-side statistics software. Depending on your host, you can select one or more to use for tracking purposes.
Comprehending Webalizer (This list is not complete)
Where to Find the Statistics
The first thing you see when you log in to Webalizer, is a bar-chart showing the traffic history of your site. By default, this will show up to a year's worth of data. To view the details, click the month as listed in the chart below the table. Clicking on the appropriate month will provide a record of activity to your website.
Referrers: A "referral" is when a user reaches your site by clicking a link on a different site. Webalizer will document which site led them to you. If they discovered you during a Google search, it will inform you that it was from Google, but not what they were searching for when they discovered you. If you want to see what visitors were looking for when they clicked, then register for Google Analytics. Every page your are trying to track should have a code snippet (script) in the footer if you use Analytics.
Files and Hits: These statistics are the most misleading. Every time a URL is put in, it is considered a "hit". This is still true if the URL has stopped working or if it was misspelled. A "file" is every completed download whether it be pages, images, sounds, or videos.
Page: When a page is legitimatly accessed, then it is counted as a page (This does not include images or flash objects not embedded in the page). Pages can have names that end in "html", "php", "asp", and so on.
Visitors: Recognition of website visitors is usually done by IP address. This may be misleading since there may be multiple users of a single IP address or a firewall might block their identity. Moreover, a single user could be registered twice in the count in the event that they take too long navigating between pages. Generally the time frame is restricted to a half-hour, however the host may alter this.
In addition, Webalizer will also log the Web crawlers (Bots such as Google's "Spider") which go to your site. This can be found in the "sites" segment of the analysis. It will be a surprise to you how many visitors to your site are spiders -- that also may consume a great deal of bandwidth. You may prohibit undesirable bots from crawling your website by making or changing the "robots.txt" file in your home folder. The majority of spiders will honor your wishes, but they aren't required to do so.
About the Author Stephen Grisham, Sr. is a copy writer for InfoServe Media, LLC. If you are looking for web site design, Houston has it. If you just need a few changes to an existing site, InfoServe Media also offers website maintenance.
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