Forum Moderators: phranque
How are we supposed to understand this stuff? Thru osmosis?
Keywords: Helps determine how relevant your site visitors are. If keywords are vaguely related to your site, then it's garbage traffic- which means you need to clarify the message your site is presenting to the search engines.
If it's relevant to what you are selling or presenting then that means you are presenting the right message to the search engines and that you are attracting the correct audience. Additionally, you can identify the keywords you may need to improve upon. For isntance, if you sell red widgets, but most of your visitors are visiting you for blue widgets, you need to crank out more blue widget pages.
Search engine referrals: identify what search engines are referring the traffic. Each search engine has a demographic suitable to b2c, b2b, etc. Make sure your site is optimized for the appropriate engine, and identify if you aren't attracting enough traffic from one of the more appropriate search engines.
Ink is important to look at, if Yahoo repersents an important demographic, as Ink is expected to play a bigger role in the future.
Anybody else have more ideas?
All I'm interested in (and I think most of us are) is the unique visits/sites, maybe where they came from, and what spiders have visited...period.
[analog.cx...]
It's part of the documentation for the stats analysis program Analog, which is freeware and based on a very conservative approach to interpreting server logs.
Unless you know where they came from, you have no idea what is "working" in bringing you traffic.
You need to know also not only which search engines brought you traffic, but what keywords they used to find you.
You can then amend you web site to hover up other key word searches that you may be missing
Additionally, you can identify the keywords you may need to improve upon. For isntance, if you sell red widgets, but most of your visitors are visiting you for blue widgets, you need to crank out more blue widget pages.
Whoops! That should read:
if you sell red widgets, but most of your visitors are visiting you for blue widget KEYWORDS, you need to crank out more RED widget pages to address the subject of red widgets.
All I'm interested in (and I think most of us are) is the unique visits/sites, maybe where they came from, and what spiders have visited...period.
from what i've seen, none of the stats programs are perfect. sometimes you need to look at the log files to get the info you need.
I'm on IIS, and using the w3C Extended Log File Format.
There are four choices for IIS logs, which should I use to get referrers and keywords?
Ok..Thanks. What a bunch of hooey...knowing what times they've visited, what day, hits, pages, how long, etc. Looks like total bloat to me.
It is very valuable infortmation, take MartiniBuster's post seriously because in time you will appreciate it.
Times of day provide good vistor profiles, what pages they visited is extremely important as is how long thay endured your page - of no one is staying, you may have a problem!
If you consider ir bloat, what are you actually looking for?
All anybody wants is at least an accurate unique visits/sites count...but since this, too, is being cached, it's all VERY meaningless.
All anybody wants is at least an accurate unique visits/sites count...but since this, too, is being cached, it's all VERY meaningless.
I don't think you can put everyone in that pigeon hole. Visits are important but I need to know other activities... then I'm a marketeer, visitor behaviour and profile is an important issue.
You may just need an hit counter?
[webmasterworld.com...]
we had a fairly detailed discussion as to what the figures mean
As Cornwall says: "You can then amend you web site to hover up other key word searches that you may be missing"
For a more sophisticated analysis, you want to know, of course, how people find you. That, and combined with what they do on their site.
Statistics may or not be interesting. I always find that the process of actually trying to figure out what they mean gives me new ideas, and ways of thinking about my site.
I agree with martinibuster, its important to figure out why people leave, especially if your keywords don't match your content. I think search terms/ keywords are probably the key element to knowing what/ and how people are thinking.
I also use bounce rate (another type of stat). When I make a content change, I monitor my bounce rate to see if people are going further in to my site.
