Reporting Web usage: what numbers do you use?

[Brian Kelly]

> Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 15:20:00 -0700
> From: "K.G. Schneider" <kgs at bluehighways.com>
> To: "'Multiple recipients of list'" <web4lib at webjunction.org>
> Subject: RE: Reporting Web usage: what numbers do you use?
> Message-ID: <20041025222003.E8B1225599 at frontend3.messagingengine.com>
> 
> > One thing folks may want to consider, Karen, (and I think sometimes 
> > they forget this or don't know it) is that some of these 
> packages are 
> > quite configurable and you can get a variety of details and 
> snapshots 
> > of what web servers collect.
> > 
> > John Creech, Systems Librarian
> > Brooks Library, Central Washington University
> 
> Yes, and that's what makes me cross about all of this. There 
> should be ONE program, and it should deliver ONE type of 
> data, and it should be hard-coded that way. ;)
> 
> Karen "Apples to Oranges to Pears" G. Schneider

... and that one program will be made by Microsoft and then we'll all be
happy :-)

As John says, not only can web usage analysis packages be configured
differently (with configuration details typically not included in the
output, so you don't know how the data was analysed) but the results of
analysing the same data using different packages can be widely different :-(
[1]  (So one way of boosting figures of people visiting your Web site is to
use a package which gives high results.)

I was involved in a group which sought to provide comparable usage data for
e-journal at one stage. This groups eventually developed an international
Code of Practice governing the recording and exchange of online usage data.
See
 http://www.projectcounter.org/

For info, some of the relevant information I came across is available at
 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/usage-processing/links

I had hoped that there would be an agreed standard for usage data (as
opposed to a single package) - however this seems not to be the case. 

Brian


Reference

1 Based on unpublished analysis of usage data for a UK museum Web site using
two widely used usage analysis packages.
---------------------------------------
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/
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