counting internet usage

[Jim Morgan]

The "about:global" command in Netscape generates a log of traffic on that
particular browser.  The log includes every item downloaded.  I found that
on older slower machines it can get so large that it's hard to generate.

The log also creates the same counting problems as server web logs, since
it includes every item retrieved - images, pages, cgi commands - so that
simple counts are not very meaningful.  A page with 6 images generates 7
entries, etc.  (I'm looking at a Netscape communicator version as I write
this; earlier versions of Netscape may behave differently.)  So, just as
with server web logs, some interpretation is necessary. If you wanted to
compare traffic between libraries, for example, you might want to separate
out just html pages, or just the number of separate sites
contacted.  To get a record of the number of sites visited, you might
want to just count the first time each user visits a site which is
difficult to do since there's no user record.  A fair substitute might be
to count the first time a site is visited in each 15-minute segment.  But
unless there's some agreement on standard definitions between libraries,
the resulting statistics will be difficult to compare.

Jim Morgan
morganj at iupui.edu


On Wed, 10 Sep 1997, Ernest Perez wrote:

> I agree with David R. Newman of Queens Univ, Belfast 
> 
> Gerry Rowland, State Library of Iowa wrote:
> > 
> > Internet use statistics are a high priority for libraries at the local,
> > state and national levels.
> > 
> > Counting hits by local users against remote Internet servers has been a goal
> > of the FSCS, the national public library statistics project, for several years.
> > 
> > The counts, we understand, are fairly easy to get off an in-house LAN server
> > on a direct connection.  The problem had been getting a count of hits from
> > an Internet service provider when the library had a dial up connection.
> > 
> > At today's meeting of the FSCS group, we learned that the command
> > "about:global" in the Location: box of the Netscape browser returns a list
> > of files downloaded and a count of total files.  I assume that Internet
> > Explorer has a similar feature.
> > 
> > It would appear that a count of hits could be tallied over a period of days
> > or weeks, then multiplied to give an annual figure to provide a count of hits.
> > 
> > Is this the way to generate Internet use statistics?  I think it just may be.
> > 
> > Gerry Rowland
> > Chair, FSCS Technical committee
>