Oso_Grizzly Posted August 29, 2003 Posted August 29, 2003 Hello everyone: I am new to the TCH familly and happy of having taken the right decision of hosting with TCH, specially for the great support group and members that it has. I have a question that will like someone to help me out with. Maybe they have been answer before, so please excuse me. I have been reading my website stats and they are confusing to me, I do not know how to interpret them or what value ranges are acceptable. Many of the terms used I do not know their meaning. For example, Are TCP connections the numbers of users online at anytime in a server ? What does the traffic analysis tells us ? Can someone please point me out to a place or previous post that could explain me this issues ? Another thing, how can I know from what country a visitor is comming from ? I have their IP, but don't know how to interpret it to find its country of origin. Best regards Oso_Grizzly Quote
TCH-JimE Posted August 29, 2003 Posted August 29, 2003 Hi Oso, The best stats package is AWstats, so go and bring that up on your cpanel. Then note the following: unique visitors This is the number of visitors with unique IP addresses that have visited your site. They may be the same visitor but on a dial up which changes the IP address or they log on in different machines in a library for instant Number of visits This is the number of times that people have visited your site including return visits from IP addresses Number of Pages This is the total number of pages read by those who visited Number of hits This definition gets banded about all over the place, but its actually the number of files requested. E.g. Say I have a front page which has a 3 pictures on it and its visited by 3 people. That means that I will have (1 page + 3 pictures) x 3 people = 4 x3 = 12 hits Bandwidth This it the amount of bandwidth that your website has consumed. Remember there is a limit to this depending on the package you brought. Days of month, Hours etc Further down the screen you can see how many you get per day and even what hour they arrive at. Visitors domains/countries (Top 25) You can also see what domains they access from (e.g. If i was to surf your website from my local library, that would end in .gov.uk) Also I can find out how popular my site is say in France or Belgium etc Hosts (Top 25 The next section allows you to see what hosts are providing access. This is basically a bit more info from where people have come from. I know on mine that the top one is my own IP address. You can also get IP addresses from here too Next section allows you to see what spiders and robots are looking at your site. This is handy for seeing how good search engines like to visit your page Visits Section A handy section allowing you to how long people stay looking at pages Files Types Shows you what files are used. Allows you to see say your flash files are being looked at or not. Pages-URL (Top 25) Allows you to see your top 25 pages that are viewed on your website Operating Systems (Top 10) Allows you to see what OS your visitors are using when surfing your site Browsers (Top 10) Here you can see what browsers are browsing your website. Unfortunately some browsers can mimic others. ALso you can catch file grabbers here too Connect to site from Possible the most useful section telling you where the traffic is coming from. This is very handy as it allows you to see what sites are driving traffic towards yours Search Keyphrases (Top 10) and Search Keywords (Top 25) A handy tool for seeing what people type into search engines which brings up your websites. Very good for wanting to know what words you should be inserting to get your pages fully SEO Hopefully that should help, if not, let me know! Jim Quote
Oso_Grizzly Posted August 29, 2003 Author Posted August 29, 2003 Jim: Thank you very much for your quick reply. Below is an example of what appears in cpanel under the domains/countries heading: Domains/Countries Pages Hits Bandwidth: Network | net 453 500 36.24 KB Unknown| ip 40 55 65.42 KB I just can not make it to show the country's name. What does this reports mean and what are aceceptable values for them ? Traffic Analysis For server35 Load Averages For server35 Established TCP Connections For server35 Thanks again for keeping up with another newbee. Oso_Grizzly Quote
Deverill Posted August 29, 2003 Posted August 29, 2003 Domains/Countries Pages Hits Bandwidth: Network | net 453 500 36.24 KB Unknown| ip 40 55 65.42 KB I just can not make it to show the country's name. Welcome to the family! The reason you can't make it show the country's name is that the computer doesn't know. The way it decides which country a visitor is from is the ending of their domain name. If it is bubba.it then it's an italian domain. If it is bellsouth.net then it shows under "network" but we can't be sure which country it's from. The same is true of .com. There are several "non country specific" domain endings - .com .net .mil .gov .edu and none of them are specific as to which country. You may have 300 guys from Belgium visit your site but if they are at SomeBelgiumCompany.com you'll never know it. The example you gave shows that you had 453 pages read by people with .net on the end of their domain names, but who knows where they are from. Quote
Oso_Grizzly Posted August 29, 2003 Author Posted August 29, 2003 Thank you very much for your welcoming words. Now I understand how this works. I appreciate your time answering this question. Oso_Grizzly Quote
TCH-JimE Posted August 29, 2003 Posted August 29, 2003 Ozo, For the other stats: What does this reports mean and what are aceceptable values for them ? This is the great thing, there is of course no acceptable values for them, as they represent what your pulling into your website. It may of course be unacceptable if say you have 0 hits or that your bandwidth is skyrocketings, but its safe to say that stats are merely a tool for checking on the health of your website, bit like when a docter does a check up on you Traffic Analysis For server35 This goes for all servers. This little graph tells you in how much traffic the server is experiencing at present. Obviously unless you own your own server you will be sharing it with other hosters and hence that graph will represent all traffic coming in and going out. Blips are usual and not uncommon. Obvious should we get a flat line then we would worry, but by that time Bills Pager would have gone off and 1/2 a dozen gurus would be manning the forts in order to get things back up and running asap. Also a high continous stream is also bad news as it would mean the server is most likely under a DOS attack. Load Averages For server35 This is about how much load the current CPU is under. If you own a computer with NT 4.0, 2000 or XP you can infact mimic this. Press alt-ctl-del and it brings up a task manager which allows you to view CPU usage, however in this case a low flat line is a good thing, and spikes should also be ignored as there are certain times of the day when obviously the server will be under load say when new accounts get put on or a server backup is done. A continous high load is a worry though and checks are put in place by Total Choice hosting. Established TCP Connections Is little more then saying "these graphs are produced from traffic from TCP connections, but not from direct access like me putting in a CD I hope this clears it up, if not, dont be afraid to ask more! Jim Quote
TCH-Rob Posted August 30, 2003 Posted August 30, 2003 Wow, thanks Jim. I learned something new today besides Japanese. Thanks! Quote
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