Web Statistics by Analog

Quick Stats Report

What are web statistics?

At its most basic, the Web works as follows: when you follow a link or type in a URL in your browser, a page request is sent from your machine to the Web server where the requested page resides. During this dialog between your computer and the server, information about you and your request is saved in a log file on the server, details such as the time and date of your request and the address of your computer. The server can also save the address of the page that referred you to the page you requested. Servers are set up to save information for a fixed period of time; the Dartmouth Web server stores 14 days worth of log files.

Web server statistics compile and sort server logs into a meaningful presentation, so you can see how people are using your Web site. You can use server statistics to see which of your pages are getting the most hits, and from where. You can look for usage trends, like at what time of day the site is most popular. You can also determine where users come from when then pay a visit to your site.

How do you use them?

Type your account name in the field above and click Go! (or press Return). Analog will look in the web server's log files for references to files in the account specified, total the number of times those files were requested, and produce a report. Note that the report you get from this page is canned, in that the types of reports are limited and are dislayed according to some standard, predefined criteria and the full date range of log files are searched. You can customize your report using the Advanced Options page.

Are they accurate?

Given the nature of the Web, there is no accurate way to calculate how many people visit your Web page. The biggest obstacle is that most browsers cache pages, so you could have people viewing your pages, but from a file that is stored on their machine, in which case there is never a request made to the server. All the statistics show is how many requests were made to your server.

Just keep in mind that Web server statistics are very useful, but they are not conclusive.

Where can I find out more?

Dartmouth provides Web statistics using the Analog analysis program. You can read the more about Analog's reports on the About the reports page. You can also read the Analog documentation online, or send email to webmaster@dartmouth.edu.