Definition of terms
The statistics report contains among others the following
information:
the number of hits, 304's, files, pageviews, sessions, data sent (in KB)
the amount of data requested, transferred, and saved by cache (in KB)
the number of unique URLs, sites, and sessions per month
the number of all response codes other than 200 (OK)
the average hits per weekday and for last week
the maximum/average hits per day and per hour
the number of hits, files, 304's, sites, data sent by day
the top 5 days, 24 hours, 5 minutes and 5 seconds of the summary period
the top 30 most commonly accessed URLs (hits, 304's, data sent)
the 10 least frequently accessed URLs (hits, 304's, data sent)
the top 30 client domains accessing your server most often
the top 30 browser types
the top 30 referrer hosts
the overview/detailed list of all files requested
the overview/detailed list of all sites by domain and reverse domain
the overview/detailed list of all browser types
the overview/detailed list of all referrer URLs
The following table summarizes the meaning of all terms
in the statistics report which are not self-explaining:
| Term |
Color |
Meaning |
| Hits |
 |
A hit is any response from the server on behalf
of a request sent from a browser. This includes any response from the server,
not only text files or documents. If, for example, a HTML page has two images
embedded, the server generates three hits if this page is requested: one hit
for the HTML page itself and two hits for the two inline images. |
| Files |
 |
If the user requests a document and the server
successfully sends back a file for this request, this is counted as a
Code 200 (OK) response. Any such response is counted for as a file.
Again, "file" here means any kind of a file. |
| Code 304 |
 |
A Code 304 (Not Modified) response is
generated by the server if a document hasn't been updated since the last
time it was requested by the user and therefore there was no need to
actually send the files for this document. This happens if the browser
(or a caching proxy server between the browser and your web server) still
has an up-to-date copy of the page in it's local storage (cache) and
therefore can display the page without requesting the actual content.
This technique is used to reduce network traffic, but it also causes an
inaccuracy in the statistics reports regarding the number of visitors,
because the browser or proxy usually sends only one such a conditional
request per user session if it still holds an up-to-date copy of the file.
However, the ratio between files and 304's reflects the
efficiency of overall caching mechanisms for at least those hits which
made it's way to the server. |
| Pageviews |
 |
Pageviews are all files which either have a text
file suffix (.html, .text) or which are directory index files.
This number allows to estimate the number of "real" documents
transmitted by your server. If defined correctly, the analyzer rates text
files (documents) as pageviews. Those pageviews do not include images,
CGI scripts, Java applets or any other HTML objects except all files
ending with one of the pre-defined pageview suffixes, such as .html
or .text. |
| Other responses |
¹ |
There are many more responses than only
Code 200 (OK) and Code 304 (Not Modified) responses,
especially in the coming standard, the HTTP 1.1 protocol specification.
For example, the server could generate a Code 302 (Redirected)
response if a page has moved, a Code 401 (Unauthorized Request)
response if access to the document is denied or a Code 404 (Not Found)
response if the requested page does not exist on this server. See the
HTML specification for
information about all valid responses from a web server. Note that
http-analyze does recognize HTTP/1.1 responses according to RFC2068. |
| KBytes transferred |
 |
This is the amount of data sent during the whole
summary period as reported by the server. Note that some servers log the
size of a document instead of the actual number of bytes transferred. While
in most cases this is the same, if a user interrupts the transmission by
pressing the browser's stop button before the page has been received
completely, some servers (for example all Netscape web servers) do not
log the amount of data transferred but the amount of data which would
have been transferred if the user would have completely loaded the page. |
| KBytes requested |
¹ |
This is the amount of data requested during the
whole summary period. http-analyze computes this number by summing
up the values of KBytes transferred and KBytes saved by cache
(see below). |
| KBytes saved by cache |
¹ |
The amount of data saved by various caching mechanisms
such as in proxy servers or in browsers. This value is computed by multiplying
the number of Code 304 (Not Modified) requests per file with the size
of the corresponding file. Note: Because http-analyze can determine
the size of a file only if the file has been requested at least once in the
same summary period, the values for KBytes saved by cache and KBytes
requested are just approximations of the real values. |
| Unique URLs |
|
Unique URLs are the number
of all different, valid URLs requested in a given summary period. This shows
you the number of all different files requested at least once in the
corresponding summary period. |
| Unique sites |
|
This is the sum of all unique hosts accessing the
server during a given time-window . The time-window is hardwired to the
length of the current month. This means that if a host accesses your server
very often, it gets counted only once during the whole month. Only the sum
of the unique hosts per month is listed in the statistics report. |
| Sessions |
 |
Similar to unique sites, this is the number
of unique hosts accessing the server during a given time-window. This
time-window is one day by default. For example, if the time-window is two hours, all
accesses from a certain host in less than 2 hours after the first access
from this host are lumped together into one session. All following accesses
more than 2 hours apart from the first access will be counted as a new session.
This way you may get an estimated number of how many sessions are started on
different sites to access your server. |
¹ shown only on the total summary page. |