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Home My WebLink About2001 03 14 Informational C City Web Site Statistical Information . ; ; ... COMMISSION AGENDA ITEM C CONSENT INFORMA TIONAL X PUBLIC HEARING REGULAR \4- 03-y.2-01 Meeting MGR~, IDEPT(jD Authorization REQUEST:The Information Services Department wishes to furnish the Commission with City web site statistical information. PURPOSE: To furnish the Commission with City web site statistical information regarding number of hits to the City's web site. CONSIDERATIONS: The City's web site is currently hosted by MPI Net which uses a software called Web Trends that gives statistical information about our web site usage; information such as number of hits, number of page views, number of visitor sessions, most requested pages, and so forth. The average number of daily hits for February as of 2/2010 1 was 202. Web site information can be viewed at any time by going to h Up: 1 Iwebstats. m pin et.net/win tersp ri n gsfl/. I have included as attachments a copy of one of the Web Trends reports which shows the number of hits and page views, as well as a WebTrends technical paper which better explains the way the Web Trends records hits, page views and user sessions. FUNDING: N/A. RECOMMENDATION: N/A Infonnational Agenda Item C ,~ Commission Meeting 3-12-01 Page 2 of2 IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULE: NIA ATTACHMENTS: WebTrends report WebTrends Technical Paper COMMISSION ACTION: WebTrends Summary Report Page I of2 vv'cbirc;.( )cis ) /~=-5:t ~J JIJ; winterspringsfl.org http://winterspringsfl.org Monthly Report February 2001 02/01/2001 00:00:00 - 02/20/2001 17:57:00 General Statistics H011p >ftJ The Visitor Profile graph identifies the overall count of visitors to your Web site. The General Statistics table provides statistics of the total activity for this Web site during the designated time frame. ..... ( .flll~(~)(1ii;) Visitor Profile Visitor Sessions o 400 300 200 100 . Visitor Profile General Statistics h~"_______~.--"-'''' Entire Site (Successful) Average Per Day Home Page Page Views (Impressions) Average Per Day Document Views Visitor Sessions Average Per Day Average Visitor Session Length International Visitor Sessions Visitor Sessions of Unknown Origin Visitor Sessions from United States Unique Visitors Visitors Who Visited Once 37,355 1,867 N/A 4.049 ~ 3,436 2,607 130 00:08:38 0.42% 21.86% 77.71% 650 337 Hits Co . .' ~-~..~-- Page v;ews' ..) Visitor Sessions Visitors httn://webstats.mninet.net/wintcrsnringsfl/200 l/m02/m02 0 I b.html 2/21/0 I WebTrcnds Summary Report Page 2 of2 Visitors Who Visited More Than Once 313 Gellerill Stiltistics - Help Cilrd ~ ? The Statistics table shows the date and time the report was generated. All dates and times refer to the location of the system running the analysis. Timeframc - Beginning date and time of the log file. Hits - A count of successful hits for the document not including the supporting graphic files on the page. Files considered web pages are those with the following extensions: .htm, .html, .asp, and a few others. These are defined by the File Types tab in the Options window. The total number of hits - A count of all successful hits including HTML pages. pictures, forms. scripts, and downloaded files. Tip: Visit http://www.webtrends.comfsupport/hits_views_sessions.htm for a detailed explanation of pages and visitor sessions. Hits: Entire Site (Successful) - A count of hits that had a .success. status code. Hits: Average Per Day - Number of Successful Hits divided by the total number of days in the log. Hits: Home Page - Number of times the home page was visited. This statistic is derived from the Home Page settings in the profile. Page Views (Impressions): Total - A count of hits to pages defined as documents or forms in the File Types tab. You can define how forms and documents are counted by modifying the Document Extensions and File Types settings. The supporting graphics on pages are not counted. Page Views: Average Per Day - Number of page views (impressions) divided by the total number of days in the log. Page Views: Document Views - A count of hits to pages that are considered documents as defined by the File Types tab in the Options window. This does not include files that have been defined as forms. Visitor Sessions: Total - A count of the visitor sessions to your site. The length of a visitor session is defined in the General tab in the Options window. Average Number of Visitor Sessions Per Day -Number of visitor sessions divided by the total number of days in the log. Average Visitor Session Length -Average of all visitor sessions in the log. Visitor Session for International, Unknown, and the United States summarize the origin of visitors in percentages of hits. Georgraphic location is logged in the User Domain field. How it is reported is determined by the Domains tab in the Options window. Visitors - A count of unique IPs for the period of the report. whether or not they were authenticated using domain names or cookies. Visitors: Unique Visitors - Unique visitors are counted using the visitor's IP address, domain name, or cookie. Persistant cookies are defined in Cookies tab in the Options window. Cookies give the most accurate count. Visitors: Visitors Who Visited Once - A count of visitor sessions that occurred only once throughout the log file. Visitors: Visitors Who Visited More Than Once - The count of visitor sessions that appeared more than once in the log file. By default a visitor session is 30 minutes. Q The General Stats table gives a general overview of the Web site's performance and your visitor's behavior, helping you quickly assess areas to address. It can determine the report chapters to focus on for valuable site enhancement statistics. This report was generated by WebTrends Tuesday February 20. 2001 . ~ ~:06:34 http://wcbstats.mpinet.nct/winterspringsfl/2001/m02/m02 0 I b.html 2/21/0 I Support: Hits vs. Page Impressions vs. User Sessions, Page 1 of2 . . Technical Papers Understanding Hits, Page Views and User Sessions In analyzing web site traffic, a number of measures are used to report on activity and volume of \ There is often confusion as to what these various measures actually mean and how they are calculated. This document explains the key methods for measuring traffic to a web site, the differ among them, and the associated statistics that appear in WebTrends reports. It is important to have a high level understanding of how web sites deliver information to a brows. user who clicks on a link (or types in a URL in a browser's address line) is actually sending a req a server to send specific information, contained on a page. This request contains the IP address return address) of the user's computer, to let the server know where to send the requested page. page itself may contain various elements, or files, including HTML text, graphic images (such as .jpg, .bmp), audio or video files, etc. As the server responds to the user's request, it writes a sum of the action into a log file. WebTrends products read these log files and analyze, summarize anc on the contents in an easy-to-understand manner. ., Methods for Measuring Web Site Activity The three most common measurements of web site activity are hits, page views and user sess Following is a description of each. View this document in MS Word format. A hit is a request to a server for a file. Total Hits is the total number of files requested from the ~ This number includes all graphics, audio/video files, and other supporting files, as well as the act HTML page itself. Total Hits includes all requests in the count, whether or not the files were successfully retrieved. Total Successful Hits, on the other hand, refers only to those files that wel successfully served. -..----- . ..: ..:-':..... ';:. .'..>~{;:\~);' . . . .. . . ~ '.' Page Views (or Page Impressions) is the number of pages viewed, not including the supporting. files. Pages are files with extensions such as .htm, .html, .asp (and a few others). By definition, tI the number of total hits is almost always greater than the number of page views. For instance, if has one web page with five graphics on it, every time a user visited that page, it would be reportE six hits and one page view or impression occurred. With WebTrends products, you can see (and the full list of page file extensions by clicking Options IWeb Log Analysis I File Types, and then Document File Extensions. User Sessions is a measure of the number of unique users who visited a web site during a certc period. Measuring user sessions is more complicated than measuring hits or page views. The us session statistic can be seen as equivalent to "Unique Visits," which, unless every visitor only se, page, will be less than the number of page views/impressions. Methods for Counting User Sessions The most accurate way to count user sessions is for the site to require that every visitor use a ur username/password combination before entering the site. This rule would ensure that the log file contained information that uniquely identified every user. WebTrends uses this information in the "authenticated user" tables. Since requiring every visitor to have a username and password is nc always practical, many web sites use cookies to uniquely identify their visitors. Cookies are pieCE software code that reside on the hard drive of the client (or requesting) computer; they contain information that identifies the computer to the server. There are problems with using cookies WhE trying to track unique user sessions. First, some people may refuse to accept cookies. Second, ( can be erased from the client hard drive. A visitor who deleted her cookie between visits could be double-counted if she visited the site again during the period being measured. Also, there is no ~ know whether different unique visitors share the same client computer. http://www.webtrends.com/support/hitsvlewssessions.htm 2/2 1/0 I Support: Hits vs. Page Impressions vs. User Sessions, Page 2 of2 ~ . Another way to track user sessions is through the IP address of the visitor. Every record in the 10 contains an IP address, since this is how the server knows where to send the information that ha requested. Counting unique IP addresses is problematic, however, because many Internet Servic Providers and companies use various methods that skew the analysis. Some organizations use dynamic ISP addressing, where an IP address can be determined dynamically when a user logs through the use of firewalls, or by a load-balancing device. Others, such as AOL, filter all data thl an intermediate proxy server. In this case, the Web server sends the requests not to the individu; requestor, but to the proxy server of the ISP. The information is then sent on to the actual visitor, with the source address of the proxy server. To count a user from an IP address a number of assumptions must be made. The first assumptic count a user for a particular IP as new/unique if the server has no record of activity for a certain ( of time (30 minutes is the default in WebTrends products, but this can be modified). Remember t Internet functions as a series of requests. The server sees each of these requests as separate al distinct. Analysis software, such as WebTrends products, analyzes and reports on these distinct requests in a meaningful manner. So the first assumption used is that if we detect a series of req being sent to a particular IP address within a defined time frame, we count these requests as a s user session. If there are no requests within a particular time frame, the next time a request com send information to that particular IP address, we count that request as a new user session. The limitations with this scheme are twofold. The first limitation lies with the use of dynamic IPs or pre servers at ISPs, as discussed above. If User A visits a site and immediately leaves, but User B c to the site within the time frame defined, using the same source IP address, both visitors will be counted as one visitor. If, on the other hand, User A visits the site, then goes and gets a cup of c or attends a meeting which exceeds the defined time frame (e.g.. 40 minutes), only to return to It and pull up a second page, then User A would be counted as two users. All log file analysis software that counts users has to work under some set of assumptions simila those described above. User Sessions do, however, give a good idea of how many people are vi the site and are the only successful way to track individual visits using current technology. Top Copyright 2001 WebTrends Corporation I !-~gS111 Privacy Statement I webmaster@lwebtrends.com http://www.webtrends:com/support/hits_views_sessions.htm 2/21/0 I