Web Trends Log Analyzing

Determining visitors on site

[dlrktc]

The Top Pages section of my web trends log identifies views and visits
views = 36324
visits = 5019
what is this telling me?

[edit_g]

visits = 5019

This is how many Visitor Sessions your site has had in the specified period. Visitor sessions is your total number of visitors - regardless of how many times they visited in the time-period.

views = 36324

This is pageviews - so your 5017 visitors looked at a total of 36324 pages on your site in the specified time period.

[dlrktc]

So each visit generated apx 7 pages viewed? I understand this does not mean 5019 unique visitors. I'm trying to find out how many users are coming to the site and it looks like this portion of the report is my best quess. Do you know how it determine unique visitors?

[edit_g]

Do you know how it determine unique visitors?

Depending on how you have it set up and which version you have it will determine Unique Visitors by cookies placed on their machines or by their IP address.

[jimnovo]

Also depending on which version you are running, and how it is set up, you might be counting activity that is not really what you would consider a "visit" or "page view".

For example, image pulls from your server by another web site can show up as "visits". Script runs and such can show up as "Page Views".

Try running it with an "Include Filter" of only files you consider to be a "page", e.g. .htm, .html, .asp, whatever kind of technology you are using. Also try it with an "Exclude Filter" on the Search Engine spiders (most versions have a built-in list of spiders for this).

These two filters may get you closer to actual visitor activity on the site; lots of variables so hard to say for sure. Other things to consider "Excluding":

Your own development activity on the site (by IP / domain)

Uptime pingers or other monitoring services (by browser)

[chewy]

Jim,

Can you provide / describe these filters in a little more detail?

Chewy