Least Viewed Pages -- WebTrends or Other

[pmgreen]

Our site has several thousand pages so we are in mist of content cleanup. Trying to figure out our least viewed pages. Currently using WebTrends 8x, but it doesn't have this report. Their tech support didn't think WT could report this data.

Are there other ways to capture this info?
Is there a script that can be run on raw logs to help?

Thanks in advance for your help

[LifeinAsia]

Their tech support didn't think WT could report this data.

What?! We're using version 6 (which does have that)- glad we never "upgraded!"

Try a Google search for '"least viewed pages" report.' Wow- this thread is already indexed!

[cgrantski]

You're right that's an important thing to know, but it's available in the Pages reports you have - although you will have to get the Pages report to be long enough to include all pages on your site so that you can jump to the bottom of the list. If you're doing a site cleanup, you should have the whole list anyway.

Keeping track of several thousand is no big deal as long as you have the storage space - we've changed the setting to 4,000 (displayed) and 100,000 (stored) for all our profiles, with no problems. If you are concerned about disk space and have Custom Reporting ability, you can save a LOT of space by creating a Pages report of your own but turning OFF "interval data" which simply means that it won't try to save the kind of data needed for the trend graph.

Anyway, skipping over the custom aspect ... edit a profile, go to the Table Sizes tab, find the Pages report, and change the "Report Limit" to 5,000 or whatever you think will do it. Change the "Analysis Limit" to something pretty large as well, like 100,000 or 250,000. That's for the internal tables.

Hope this helps? Will it do what you want, do you think?

[cgrantski]

And, I think the reason that report isn't there any more is because they got complaints about "why aren't the pages that have never been viewed on my least-viewed pages report?" Since the information is there anyway, just at the bottom end of an existing report, they got rid of it entirely rather than deal with the concept of getting "the least views."

I was one of those complainers, until it was gently pointed out what an incredibly stupid idea it was! I've come a long way since then.

[pmgreen]

LifeinAsia

In 6, it gives you a list of least viewed pages? Does it have a date/time stamp on the last visit?

cgrantski

I talked to the WT techs who said changing the table size is extremely risky and they do not recommend it.

Will changing the table also so pages with zero visits?

[LifeinAsia]

Nope- just the pages title, URL, number of visits, etc.

[cgrantski]

There is a risk. Maybe the WT techs got info on the size of your system and made their recommendation with that information in mind?

As I said, we run WT very hot with huge table sizes, no problems. But I can't say there's no risk.

[pmgreen]

cgrantski, do you get pages with "0" views by extending the table size?
We are trying to find those pages that no-one has visited in x amount of time. I said to delete pages and if someone cries we put the page back. That didn't fly.

[cgrantski]

No. If a page wasn't visited, there's no way for it to get into the tracking. So it's simply absent from the report.

Do you really need information about tapering off? Wouldn't "visited 2 times so far this year" be good enough, regardless of whether those 2 times were in January or August?