One of the best ways to study web traffic is to download your server logs. These are text files that contain every request made to your web server. They include requests for pages, images, and other elements on your site. Logs are particularly useful if you want to hone in on a certain page, browser, or search engine referral.
A server log entry contains the IP address of the computer requesting the element from your site, followed by the date and time of the request, which file and the method of transfer, and where the request came from, such as another site or a search engine. If it came from a search engine, the search terms are usually included as well. The last piece of information is the web browser and operating system of the computer requesting the file.
Studying server logs is a great way to begin analyzing your web traffic in-depth. You will also want to see “snapshots” of your web traffic. There are many tools available to look at server logs, but they can also be expensive. Your web host probably includes statistics with your hosting package.
Good Traffic Stats Help Attract Advertising
If you are looking to attract advertising to your website, your statistics are an important tool. Be sure to define your terminology when you talk to advertisers as sometimes people use different words for similar subject matter. A hit, for example, is a request for a file. It could be a request for an HTML document, an image file, or an audio file. Sites with many page elements will receive a high amount of hits but these tell you very little about your visitors.
A page view is another way to indicate how many times your page has been viewed. It does not tell you who is visiting your site, but it can give you an idea about the popularity of certain pages, which is useful when you want to sell advertising on your site. Unique visitors are where statistics really make a difference.
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