The first things you will see are:
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Unique Visitors
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Number of Visits
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Pages
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Hits
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Bandwidth
These can be a bit confusing so here is a brief explanation.
Unique Visitors
- These are the total number of visits by a unique IP address. This
can be a bit misleading because dial-up visitors get a new IP each time
they log on so you can have the same person visit different times and give
a unique hit.
Number of Visits
The number of visits are the total number of visits by all visitors
over a given period of time. If I visit your site and then come back 4
more time you should see one Unique visit and 5 visits from me.
Pages
This is the total number of pages viewed by visitors. This does not
include images, java script or CSS and the like. Just HTML and CGI type
files.
Hits
- This is every file requested by the visitor. This includes pages
and images together. If you have a page with 2 images calling a java script
file the page will generate a total of 4 hits. The most common referenced
stat used and one that is virtually meaningless (and useless). The more
appropriate numbers to consider are both 'number of visitors' and 'unique
visitors' (see above).
Bandwidth
The total number of bytes downloaded. If you have a page that has
50 KB of text, 2 images at 24 KB and 32 KB then each visitor to that page
will take 106 KB of your bandwidth.
AWStats then gives you this information for the year so far as well
as a 30 and 7 day perspective. Finally it gives it to you by the hour.
Next is Visitors Domains/Countries
(Top 25)*. This shows you what countries your visitors are coming from,
starting with the most and working its way down.
* All categories with a Top 10 or 25 have a "Full
List" link at the top of the category that can give you an entire
list if there are more than 10 or 25.
Following this is the Hosts Top
25*. This gives you a breakdown of the top individual visitors to your
site.
Next is a popular category, Robots/Spider
Top 25* visits. Here is a great way to see when your favorite search engine
has last visited your site as well as how many hits it has made (again,
'hit' can be misleading here).
Although not as popular of a category, the Visits
Duration is an important one. Here you can tell how long visitors
are staying on your site. Are a vast majority leaving in the first 30 seconds?
Maybe its time to rethink your sites design or content.
Files/Type lets you see what files
are generating the most hits.
Top 25 Pages* URL gives you the
most visited pages on your site.
Top 10 Operating Systems* shows
what Operating Systems your visitors are using in order of popularity.
Next is Top 10 Browsers. Like the
OS category above, this shows what browsers your visitors are using in
order of popularity.
Connect to Site From is a multi-part
category.
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It starts with Direct Address/Bookmark. This is the number of visitors
that either know the name of your site or have it bookmarked.
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Links from a newsgroup is just that.
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Links from an Internet Search Engine gives us a listing of the number of
visitors coming from a search engine.
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Links from Other Web Pages shows what pages your visitors are coming from.
This does not mean there is a link to your site on the listed page; it
just registers where the visitor was coming from.
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Links from an Internal Page is self explanatory and Unknown is just that,
not known.
Next we have our Top 10 key phrases*
and Top 25 key words* used to find
our site.
The last two are Miscellaneous and
HTTP Error codes. These give miscellaneous
information and what HTTP codes are given to your visitors.
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