Web Usage Statistics

[Brian Kelly]

Hi Judith
   A word of warning - analysis of Web log statistics may be misleading.
Analyses by different packages may give different results; differences
over a time period may reflect changes in your Web site and not changes
in usage patterns; growth in usage may be the result of visits by
robots, off-line browsers, Web accelerators, etc.; growth in usage may
be the result of growth in the nos. of one-off visitors who find your
Web site using a search engine and then leave straight away; a decrease
in usage may be the result of the development of a caching
infrastructure; an increase in average session time may be the result of
many brief visits from people behind the same firewall; etc. etc.

  There is a problem with the lack of standards in this area - what is a
page, what is a session, what is a visitor - and the difficulties
inherent on the Web - how do you detect a unique visitor on a normal Web
site, with no authentication.

  I wrote an article on this subject some time ago - see: 

http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue5/indicators/
And the related slides at:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/seminars/epsg-2000/


Brian Kelly
---------------------------------------
Brian Kelly
UK Web Focus
UKOLN
University of Bath 
BATH
BA2 7AY
Email: B.Kelly at ukoln.ac.uk
Web: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
Phone: 01225 323943
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Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 10:26:52 +1000
From: Judith Pearce <jpearce at nla.gov.au>
To: "'web4lib at webjunction.org'" <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Subject: Web Usage Statistics
Message-ID:
<35A0BC67FA1AD311B18E0090277A4187028BB0DE at mirkwood.nla.gov.au>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain

I am interested in finding our more about the status of commercial
products for measuring web site usage statistics.  We have a relatively
complex web site with around 7,000 static pages, a dozen or so service
entry points to information services delivered by in-house and third
party applications and a growing number of digital collection items.
Some of these are on a different physical server (eg the OPAC) or
virtual server (eg Picture Australia). We need a product that can give
us:

(1) Number of hits, page impressions, visits, unique visits, etc on a
daily basis for the whole site and for each specific web-based service
and
category of digital collection item.   
(2) Ability to break down visits by domain of origin and browser across
all servers and for specific  directories.
(3) Ability to discriminate between staff, reading room and external use
across all servers and for specific directories.
(4) Ability to generate monthly reports for business managers with
minimal intervention and delay after the last day of the month.
(5) Support for "same time last year" trend analysis. 

Our current product vendor claims to be targeting this mid-range to
large market but there seem always to be new problems that prevent us
from establishing a robust and stable production system.  In the
meantime the business owners' expectations are increasing for reliable
performance measures and benchmarks for their web-based services.  

If would be interested in hearing from anyone with a product in
production that is providing a good level of service against
requirements like these.  

Judith Pearce
Director, Web Services
National Library of Australia
CANBERRA  ACT  2601
Australia  

Phone:  +61 2 62621425
Fax:  +61 2 6273 3648
Email: jpearce at nla.gov.au
NLA Web Site:  http://www.nla.gov.au


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