AWStats interpretation question

Confused by the Origin figures in AWStats' report

[jar03]

Hi All,

I've been puzzling over one of the figures in the AWStats report for a couple of days, and hoped someone could shed some light.

In the "Origin" section of the report, the figures are given as number of pages referred from

-directly accessing
-search engines
-other sites
-internal pages

However, what my client (and me, now) wants to know is how many *visitors* are being referred from each of these places.

Why doesn't AWStats include this data? And what does the number of pages mean in this context? It doesn't tally with 'visits', but I don't think it means pages visited on the whole site (otherwise what would be the point of the 'internal pages' number?).

I hope my question makes sense, and really appreciate anyone's take on this.

jar03

[le_gber]

I think that these numbers represent the number of visitors/hits you get from these particular pages.

If you add up the numbers from the origin table you should get the number in the pages/hits table (the first one).

I think is that you may have configured your awstats file to consider only hits on pages ie when your server download a image it doesn't appear on the stat that's why you get the same number for hits and pages.

Hope this helps.

Leo

[jar03]

Thanks, Leo.

You're right - they do add up to the total number of pages given at the top of the stats. I hadn't noticed that before (!).

I'm still not clear about how to interpret these 'number of pages' figures. I'll try to give an example to explain what I mean.

In the origins section, it says that there were 146 pages linked from Google.

Only, I don't care about the number of *pages*, I care about the number of *visits* coming from Google.

AWStats doesn't give this number, which is the one I really want - unless it's giving it in a way I don't understand.

Is there any way to tell? Is it possible the two are roughly the same?

Originally I thought that it must mean the total number of pages people coming from Google looked at on the site. Only, there's this great big number (1116 pages) called 'links from an internal page'. Which would suggest that the Google number *doesn't* include jumping around inside the site - wouldn't it?

Terribly sorry - I know this is probably confusing for you - it's confusing for me! Again, any help or advice gratefully received.

jar03

[le_gber]

jar03 the number you get is the number of pages that have been hit by somebody using either the link or the search engine so effectively you get the number of visitors using these way of finding your site.

For example the 146 pages you've got from google is the number of pages that have been visited from google 146 hits x 1 page = 146 visitors.

Awstats doesn't keep track of where the visitor came from when he/she browse your site so the 1116 pages linked internally are people browsing your site ie once they get passe the first referral (yahoo, google, links from other sites), your site become the referral.

To summarize (and try to get the explanation clearer ;) ) the stats you've got in the origin table are visitors. These visitors are sorted from where they came from externally (SE, links, direct hits) and internally (once they were on a page of your site and start browsing it).

Hope it was clearer :)

Leo

[jar03]

Thanks very much, Leo. I wondered if that was the case, but thought it couldn't be - otherwise they would have just called the numbers 'visits'!

I'm satisfied that I understand now.

best wishes,

jar03

[le_gber]

no pb glad I could be of help.

BTW Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com] ;)

Leo