Hi

When reading page views and exits etc with awstats, are the numbers corretc? which numbers should be trusted.

For example, if a page is showing 100 view, 2 entry and 10 exit, does that mean that the page was actually viewed 100 times with 2 people entering the site on this page and leaving on this page?

The reason I am asking is that I have a page that can only be acessed once a user files in a form, but the 'submitted' form numbers do not match up to any of the numbers on awstats (either page views or exits) - I have looked on google but can't find a suitable or definitive answer.
The link to the page in question is via a bit of javascript, not html (dont know if that makes a difference)

Which stats should I look at to know how many people have visited the page?

Can someone shed some light on this please.

Any comments would be appreciated.

All web stats should be taken with a pinch of salt as they are rarely 100% accurate!

As a general guide "uniques" refers to unique visitors, and "page views" tells you how many pages those unique visitars have looked at.

Ignore anything called "hits" as it's virtually meaningless

Thanks blue-dreamer.

I am ignoring hits and stuff like that - its the visits I was mainly asking about.

These are the stats I am on about, in awstats, when viewing page-urls which is most important out of the following?

Viewed | Average size | Entry | Exit

Which of the above are a fair representation of people who have visited the page (the only way to get to the page is by submitting a form)

Is it the Viewed section? How acurate is it?

Thanks in advance.

I would recommend you use also some web based tools like google analyzer. Just use both and compare things.

What monitoring do you use?

Originally Posted by HowLong

What monitoring do you use?

given the thread title I guess that it is Awstats

I agree with OP, that is quite difficult to understand log analyzer. But I would agree that you need to have more to have possibility to compare data

Google analyser is the best option for stats. It is just too powerful and gives excellent reports, unlike log analyser softwares.

I also use Google analytics which is very easy to understand but the two rarely match up, from what I understand (and I may be wrong) awstats (and the like!) is more likely to be correct than Google analytics which is why I want to know how to read the information correctly and could do with knowing how accurate the data is.

From reading some of the posts it sounds like people dont know - whilst I appreciate answers please dont put something like "use awstats" or "use google" as this is not very informative (and annoying ) - I refer back to my previous questions

These are the stats I am on about, in awstats, when viewing page-urls which is most important out of the following?

Viewed | Average size | Entry | Exit

Which of the above are a fair representation of people who have visited the page (the only way to get to the page is by submitting a form)

Is it the Viewed section? How acurate is it?

Any answers would be appreciated.

The only way to be 100% sure of ANY data with regards to site logs is to actually read the site logs yourself, not a task for the faint hearted even for a light traffic site.

With all analysers you are stuck with what the programmer(s) decided to implement as the limits or parameters for any given measurement. The ONLY way to get to grips with whatever you use, is to take any time period and import the logs into a spreadsheet or a database so you can sort them or filter by different methods and compare the results against the same period in the analyser.
This should give you a better feel for what each reported value means and what the report means by visits and uniques.

What is more important than the disparate figures are the trends.

With Awstats:
Viewed is the number of times the page has been accessed.
Average size is the Data Transfer for that page divided by the number of accesses.
Entry is the count of direct "hits" to the page
Exit is the count of UA leaving the site on that page.

First I agree with everything Chris said. Second know there isn't going to be one most important metric. You want to understand what each is telling you in order to better understand something on your site.

For example exits should be giving you information about which pages people leave your site through. By itself it's not necessarily the most meaningful. There's a good chance your most visited pages will be the top exit pages simply because so many people view the page.

Entry would naturally be the pages people enter the site. They should end up being pages that rank well or are linked to often or maybe have become popular on one social media site or another.

If the only way to get to the page in question is through a form then entry would probably be the best measure. I'd suspect that it's not really the only way to access the page though.

Viewed would be how many times the page was viewed. If I visit that page, visit another and then hit my back button that might count as 2 views.

Thanks for the replies, very informative - I will look at importing the site logs into excel.

Just one final question regarding Google analytics. If I have a goal set up (for enquiries for example) and the number of goals (enquiries) on analytics states 4 for one day but I have only received 2 (the goal path shows different paths for all goals so they're not duplicates) does this mean I am getting enqiries that are not getting to my inbox? or is it just analytics messing up?

Thanks again.

I am getting enqiries that are not getting to my inbox

Yes for Google analytics, because to have visit counted (into inbox) visitor's browser need to support Java

Thanks for the reply but I think it your answer would work the other way round - if I was getting more enquiries than analytics stated but I am getting less enquiries than analytics are stating.