Webalizer: Website Usage Statistics

The Webalizer program produces several reports and graphics for each month processed. In addition, a summary page is generated for the current and previous months (up to 12).
Note: Statistics are compiled at midnight each night so today's stats won't appear until tomorrow.

Generally the first page you see is the yearly (index) report showing statistics for a 12 month period, and links to each month. The monthly report has detailed statistics for that month- click the month to see that month's details. The various totals shown are explained below.

Hits
Any request made to the web server which is logged, is considered a 'hit'. The requests can be for anything... webpages, graphic images, audio files, video files, scripts, etc... Each valid line in the server log is counted as a hit. This number represents the total number of requests that were made to the server during the specified report period.

Files
Some requests made to the server, require that the server then send something back to the requesting client, such as a html page or graphic image. When this happens, it is considered a 'file' and the files total is incremented. The relationship between 'hits' and 'files' can be thought of as 'incoming requests' and 'outgoing responses'.

Pages
Generally, any HTML or PHP, etc. document would be considered a page. This does not include the other stuff that goes into a document, such as graphic images, audio clips, etc... This number represents the number of 'pages' requested only, and does not include the other 'stuff' that is in the page. What actually constitutes a 'page' can vary from server to server. The default action is to treat anything with the extension '.htm', '.html', '.php', etc. as a page.

Sites
Each request made to the server comes from a unique 'site', which can be referenced by a name or ultimately, an IP address. The 'sites' number shows how many unique IP addresses made requests to the server during the reporting time period. This DOES NOT mean the number of unique individual users (real people) that visited, which is impossible to determine using just logs and the HTTP protocol.

Visits
Whenever a request is made to the server from a given IP address (site), the amount of time since a previous request by the address is calculated (if any). If the time difference is greater than a pre-configured 'visit timeout' value (or has never made a request before), it is considered a 'new visit', and this total is incremented (both for the site, and the IP address). The default timeout value is 30 minutes (can be changed), so if a user visits your site at 1:00 in the afternoon, and then returns at 3:00, two visits would be registered.

Many large ISPs such as AOL, MSN, and the like, will cache a site's webpages on their servers. That way when one of their customer's visits your site after connecting through AOL, the AOL server relays the information if someone else from AOL has already been there. So AOL's visit counts as One visit, but can represent Hundreds of visits from AOL users. So sometimes this number may actually be higher in reality.

KBytes
The KBytes (kilobytes) value shows the amount of data, in KB, that was sent out by the server during the specified reporting period.

Top Entry and Exit Pages
The Top Entry and Exit tables give a rough estimate of what URL's are used to enter your site, and what the last pages viewed are. Because of limitations in the HTTP protocol, log rotations, etc... this number should be considered a good 'rough guess' of the actual numbers, however will give a good indication of the overall trend in where users come into, and exit, your site.

Referrers
This shows how people are finding your site, what websites have links to you or what search engines they are using. You can even click on those links to view the page that they came from. If your website is on the referrers list, it means that someone typed in your website address (URL) and went directly to your site.