Data Types

[Overview | Data Types | Users]

Each monthly activity page uses the same data measures of hits, files, users and kilobytes but breaks them down into more specific categories. These include daily usage activity, hourly usage activity, top user agents (which shows which brand and version of Web browser your visitors are using to view your site), and usage by country. Following are descriptions of the data you will be able to track.

Hits

Any reference to the number of "HITS" your Web site receives is the number of file REQUESTS made by a visitor to your Web site. An important thing to know about this figure is that if a visitor types in your homepage address, www.your-site.com, the number of files contained in that request includes the page itself AND all of the images on that page. Hence, if your homepage contains eight images, the total number of files requested is actually nine. Images, like the buttons and pictures on each page of your Web site, are individual files and will generate a "HIT".

Files

This figure is similar to "Hits" but represents only those files "Sent" to a visitor in response to his or her request. The reason that the Files figure is often slightly less than the "Hits" figure is that most Web browsers "cache" or save images in their temporary memory as they surf a Web site. By saving image files, which are usually much larger than the text and code contained in a Web page, your computer renders successive Web pages of the site that have recurring images from the previous page much more quickly. In other words, once a visitor loads and views the "home" page, and then goes to the "products" page, the browser does not have to retrieve most of the buttons all over again because they are mostly the same from the "home" page.

Kilobytes

This figure represents the amount of data transmitted in response to a visitor's request. The files of your Web site have various sizes in terms of how large or small they are. The actual Web page files, which are made up of HTML code and simple text, are relatively small; image files however, like the buttons and pictures on a page, are much larger. The total number of kilobytes transferred represents the bandwidth the site is using in any given period. The larger the total number of kilobytes needed to render any given page of your site, the longer it takes a visitor to see the complete page on their computer.