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>> Stats >> Interpret Your Stats
Hits and Visits and Sites, Oh My! It's one thing to have information available to review. It's another to know how to interpret that information. Here is a quick course in the Webalizer stats interface.
The first thing you'll see is a set of text links taking you through the stats report page, followed by a monthly summary report. Here's a quick overview of the terms used in both, so you can easily interpret who's coming to your site and why.
Hits: A hit is any file that is requested from your site. That file can be a html page, a gif graphic, a jpg, etc. If your home page consists of three photos, a logo, and index.html then each time someone visits that page it will account for five hits - one for the page itself, plus one for each image.
Files: The files count tells you how many files were actually sent to a user's browser. The relationship between 'hits' and 'files' can be thought of as 'incoming requests' and 'outgoing responses'. 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.
Pages: This is actual "html" and "htm" files that are viewed. If someone visits your index.html page, that would account for 1 page each time they view a page. "Pages" doesn't count image file hits, thus giving a more accurate count of how many times actual pages on your site were viewed.
Visits: This is how many times someone actually goes to your site. They may account for 38 hits and 12 pages but they only visited one time. If someone goes to another site and then back to your site without disconnecting from the Internet then it still only counts as one visit.
KBytes: This is a measurement, in kilobytes (or 1/10th of a Megabyte [Mb] ) of the traffic your site is attracting. This amount includes all images, multimedia files and text files (like HTML and PHP files).
Sites: This is where people are coming from - usually a connection point with their ISP. Every time someone visits your site they account for 1 visit. But when when they visit your site five times in one month they only account for one site. There are some exceptions regarding how they access the Internet. If your visitor is coming from their home and they come visit four times in one month, they only account for one "site".
URLs: These are the addresses visitors are requesting. They may reflect a folder (/portfolio/portraits/) or a specific file (/portfolio/gallery1.html). These addresses may be requested by bookmarks, links or typed in by the visitor.
Referrers: This is how people are getting to your site. This list may include search engine sites, people that have linked to your site, and direct requests when people have typed your web address into their browser.
User Agents: This shows three important pieces of information: what browser your visitors use, what version, and what platform they are on. Internet Explorer will show up as MSIE, Netscape will be Mozilla, and AOL will show up either as AOL or as MSIE. Some "webcrawlers" will show up here as well. These are used by search engines and web indexers to gather info about your site.
Entry Pages: This is where a visitor's session starts - the page a visitor used to enter your site.
Exit Pages: This is where a visitor's session ends. If too many of your entry and exit pages are the same, you may want to consider redesigning your site, because visitors aren't spending too much time in your site, nor are they exploring what you have to offer.
Response Codes: These are codes sent back to the visitor's browser or ISP, based on the request made. Some of the more common codes are explained below. For a more thorough explanation (this gets really technical–don't say we didn't warn you!), go here.