The WEBALIZER

What is the WEBALIZER?

The Webalizer is a web server log file analysis program which produces usage statistics in HTML format for viewing with a browser. The results are presented in both columnar and graphical format, which facilitates interpretation. Yearly, monthly, daily and hourly usage statistics are presented, along with the ability to display usage by site, URL, referrer, user agent (browser) and country.

The information below is designed to help you understand the terms and classifications the Webalizer uses to compile your site's statistics. This text will most likely be overwhelming if you attempt to read and understand it without first looking at the Webalizer statistics for your site. If you have any questions after you've looked over the Webalizer and the following information, feel free to contact us as convenient.

Output Produced
The Webalizer produces several reports (html) and graphics for each month processed. In addition, a summary page is generated for the current and previous months (up to 12), a history file is created and if incremental mode is used, the current month's processed data. The yearly (index) report shows statistics for a 12 month period, and links to each month. The monthly report has detailed statistics for that month with additional links to any URL's and referrers found. The various totals shown are explained below.

Note: Keep in mind that all of the statistics will include any visits you or your company make to the site as well as visits we make to your site for publishing, updating, or browser check reasons. High statistics for a particular day may be attributed to these types of "internal" visits.

Hits
Any request made to the server which is logged, is considered a 'hit'. The requests can be for anything... html pages, graphic images, audio files, cgi scripts, etc. Each valid line in the server log is counted as a hit. This number represents the total number of requests that were made to the server during the specified report period. REMEMBER: Since you are sharing a small piece of a larger server, the hits will be a combined total of all web sites hosts. This is not a good tool to judge your particular site's traffic, just the server as a whole.

Files
Some requests made to the server, require that the server then send something back to the requesting client, such as a html page or graphic image. When this happens, it is considered a 'file' and the files total is incremented. The relationship between 'hits' and 'files' can be thought of as 'incoming requests' and 'outgoing responses'.

Pages
Pages are, well, pages! Generally, any HTML document, or anything that generates an HTML document, would be considered a page. This does not include the other stuff that goes into a document, such as graphic images, audio clips, etc. This number represents the number of 'pages' requested only, and does not include the other 'stuff' that is in the page. What actually constitutes a 'page' can vary from server to server. The default action is to treat anything with the extension '.htm', '.html' or '.cgi' as a page. Some people consider this number as the number of 'pure' hits.

Sites
Each request made to the server comes from a unique 'site', which can be referenced by a name or ultimately, an IP address. The 'sites' number shows how many unique IP addresses made requests to the server during the reporting time period. This DOES NOT mean the number of unique individual users (real people) that visited, which is impossible to determine using just logs and the HTTP protocol (however, this number might be about as close as you will get).

Visits
Whenever a request is made to the server from a given IP address (site), the amount of time since a previous request by the address is calculated (if any). If the time difference is greater than a preconfigured 'visit timeout' value (or has never made a request before), it is considered a 'new visit', and this total is incremented (both for the site, and the IP address). The default timeout value is 30 minutes, so if a user visits your site at 1:00 in the afternoon, and then returns at 3:00, two visits would be registered.

Note: in the 'Top Sites' table, the visits total should be discounted on 'Grouped' records, and thought of as the "Minimum number of visits" that came from that grouping instead.

Note: Visits only occur on PageType requests, that is, for any request whose URL is one of the 'page' types defined with the PageType option. Due to the limitation of the HTTP protocol, log rotations and other factors, this number should not be taken as absolutely accurate. Rather, it should be considered a pretty close "guess".

KBytes
The KBytes (kilobytes) value shows the amount of data, in KB, that was sent out by the server during the specified reporting period. This value is generated directly from the log file, so it is up to the web server to produce accurate numbers in the logs. In general, this should be a fairly accurate representation of the amount of outgoing traffic the server had.

Top Entry and Exit Pages
The Top Entry and Exit Pages give a rough estimate of what URL's are used to enter your site, and what the last pages viewed are. Because of limitations in the HTTP protocol, log rotations, etc... this number should be considered a good "rough guess" of the actual numbers, however will give a good indication of the overall trend in where users come into, and exit, your site.