General Summary

If you've looked at site statistics before, you'll notice that as of January 2002 you're receiving several new reports. These include the Referring URL, Browser, Browser Summary, and Search Word reports. You'll continue to receive all of the previous types of reports, and can view the archives of all reports we've generated for your site. The following sections describe the most informative and relevant of these reports.

The summary report provides an overview of major statistics.

1. Successful server requests: The total of all requests, including graphics, for the entire reporting period. This is generally the largest number you'll see in your report, but it is also the least meaningful because it isn't broken down into any useful detail.

2. Successful requests for pages: This number includes web pages only. It does not include graphics or any other types of files.

3. Failed requests: Indicates the number of times a user clicked a link and got an error message such as File not found or Forbidden. The most common causes of failed requests are incorrect HTML references (bad URLs in links) or a visitor partially downloading a page (leaving before all the files have been fully transferred). To get much more useful information about failed requests on your site, you should use the broken links report.

4. Redirected requests: The user was directed to a different file instead. The most common cause of these requests is that the user has incorrectly requested a directory name without the trailing slash. The other common cause of redirected requests is their use as click-thru advertising banners.

5. Distinct files requested: This number is potentially of interest if you know how many total files comprise your site, in which case you can determine what percent are actually being visited. It includes graphics as well as HTML files.

6. Distinct hosts served: The number of distinct hosts served is often used as a measure of the number of different visitors to your site.

7. Total data transferred: If you have a 50k file, and it's transferred 10 times, the total data transferred is 500k. This is useful for getting a sense of how much bandwidth your site is using.