Welcome
This manual is to help you guide your way through reading the data that is
provided in your log file for your website. We hope that you find this very
useful and help you know what you are looking at.
Webalizer is a marketing program that is to better understand how well your
website is working for your company. Webalizer is a free log file analysis
program that can be used to analyze your current extended_log data. It
can produce configurable numerical and graphical reports based on your Web
site's traffic.
Using the link below, you will be able to find out how to read and
understanding the Webalizer tool that has been added to your website. Let's get
started.
© 2006 Aperion Information Technologies, Inc.
www.aperion.com
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Definitions
Hits: The total number of requests that were made to a specific server
over a specific time period.
Files: The total number of requests where something was sent back to the
user. Not all requests will send data.
Sites: The Number of UNIQUE IP addresses/hostnames that made requests.
This number is only an estimate because one user could come from many IP
addresses.
Visits: When a remote site makes a request for your 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. Then, sequence repeats. Since only pages
will trigger a visit, remote sites that link to graphic and other non- page
URLs will not be counted in the visit totals, reducing the number of false
visits.
LAN (Local Area Network): a computer network covering a small geographic
area, like a home, office, or group of buildings.
Uniform Resource Locator (URL): All requests have to request something.
The URL represents an object on a server that is accessible to a remote
user.
Pages: URLs that would be considered the actual page being requested,
however, not all of the individual items that make it up (such as graphics and
audio clips).
Kilobyte (KB): Equals 1,024 bytes. Used
to show the amount of data that was transferred between the server and
the remote machine.
Referrers: 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.
Entry/Exit pages: Pages that were the first requested in a visit
(Entry), and the last requested (Exit). These pages are calculated using the
Visits definition (above).
Countries: Based on the top level domain of the requesting site. 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 dial up and
other customer access points do not resolve to a name and are left as an IP
address.
Response Codes: Generated by the web server and indicate the completion
status of each request made.
Hostnames: IP Address that tells who is accessing your web site.
The following is only available if that information is contained in the Webalizer
User Statistics:
Search Strings: 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.
User Agents: Plain and simple - Browsers. Netscape, Opera, Konqueror,
Internet Explorer, 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.
• Usage Summary • Monthly Statistics • Daily Statistics • URLs
• Entry Pages • Exit Pages • Referrers • User Agents • Countries • Total Sites • Table of Contents •
Usage Summary
When first logging in to see the statistics for any website, you must put in
the website address. Then, following the .com you must add /log.
Next, it will ask for a screen name and password. These may have been provided
for you, but you should do your best to remember them because you will need to
know it every time you would like to look at the statistics.
After you log in, you will see something similar to what is below. There are
two boxes. The one on top you have a bar graph that states how many pages have
been viewed, how many hits there have been, etc. The bottom box states the same
thing as the top, but only with numbers, and in the form of a table. Each
column is labeled, then the background of each label is colored. These colors
coordinate to the bar graph above. On the left of the bottom box, it states
each month and year as a link. In order to take a closer look at any of the
months, simply click one of the links.
Monthly Statistics
After clicking the link that would show you the statistics for any month, you
would find many boxes in a row. What do the boxes represent? Well the first one
called Monthly Statistics breaks down the month in one box. Take a look at the
picture below.
This box is interesting. It tells you everything you need to know for a
specific month in one glance. If you are confused about the difference between
hits, visits, files and pages check out our definitions page.
Under all the totals you have it broken down even further to hour and days.
This would be useful if you wanted to try something new with marketing and
wanted to see how it effected everything for that time period.
Then, under the per day statistics is the Hits by Response Code. This
feature is good to know if there is any errors on your page when it tries to
load. The Code 200 - OK is something that is always good to have.
Daily Statistics
This graph tells you everything for the month day by day. Once again, the labels
that run across the right vertical side are the same colors as the bars in the
graph.
This picture shows you the Daily Statistics in numbers as opposed to bars in
the graph above. Only, this is broken up by day. The first of the month is the
first line, and the second of the month is the second line and so on. This
feature also tells you the percentage at which that number is accounted for in
the month.
URLs
This picture only shows the top 30 of 115 URLs that were used on the website.
It shows the pages that were viewed the most and actually how many times it was
hit. It is sorted by the number of hits it received.
This picture shows the same information as the URL Chart above, only it is the
top 10 of 115 and then it is sorted by KBytes, not hits.
Entry Pages
This feature is useful because it allows you to see what brings the viewers to
your website. Entry pages are the first page requested in a visit. This box
shows the top 10 of 13; sorted by number of hits again.
Exit Pages
This shows what the last URL that was requested from your website in a visit.
This box shows only the top 10 of 13 exit pages. This feature is actually good
if you would like to see what people are actually using your website for.
Referrers
This feature shows you what brings people to your website and through what URL.
This picture only shows you the top 30 of 42 referrers. This chart is sorted by
the number of hits made from that URL.
User Agents
This picture shows you what browsers people are using mostly to view your site.
It also tells you a little about the computer system that they are using such
as Windows or Mac. It also tells you what version of the system they are using
so you can better fit your website to fit your users.
Countries
For the Countries box, this tells you where people are when they are
requesting information from your company's website. It gives you the Total
hits, files, KBytes, and Country.
Total Hits, Files, KBytes are the same as if they are on
another box. As for the Country part, it could say one of many things. The
Country section in this box states Unresolved/Unknown because it is from
the
There are several locations at which the computer would know where it would be
from. The extension at the end of the website tells a lot about the user (i.e.
www.yahoo.com). The .com at the end tells that it is a Commercial
Company, generally in the
.net means that it is part of a network.
.org means that is a non-profit orgiziation.
.edu means that it is an educational site.
All of these could be placed in the Country box.
Total Sites
In the picture above, your company will be able to tell who is requesting
information from your website. This picture tells you (from left to right);
Hits, Files, KBytes, Visits, and Hostnames.
The picture above shows you the same thing as the top one only with the
information sorted by the KBytes category and not the Hits category.