How to understand the AWStats site counter

What is a hit? The terminology used by computer geeks for server statistics can be confusing so here is an attempt to define some of the statistics you will see on your AWStats site counter pages. We use AWStats to give you a picture of your site visitors during the last month. For an alternative picture of your visitors, we also recommend Google Analytics and we are happy to set up your website to feed data to Google.

Unique Visitor

A unique visitor is a computer on the Internet which has made at least 1 hit on 1 page of your web site during the current period shown by the report. If this computer made several visits during this period, it is counted only once. Users on a network of computers may all be considered as a single visitor so you may have had more real human beings actually visiting your site. The period shown by AWStats reports is by default the current month. So if you visit your own site from one computer you are only counted as one unique visitor during the month.

Visits

Number of visits made by all visitors. If a unique visitor returns to your site within an hour, this still counts as one visit. If a unique visitor returns later in the month then this is counted as a new visit. The ratio of visits to unique visitors gives an idea of multiple visits during the month from unique visitors.

Pages

The number of pages visited. This data gives a rough idea of the number of pages viewed by your visitors. The ratio of pages to visits gives an idea of the number of pages a visitor views. However, please be aware that art71's scripts often generate many different "pages" from a single "page" as understood by AWStats so the figure may be heavily under-counted and in reality many more "pages" have been viewed by your visitors.

Hits

All files requested from the server. Hits are a misnomer. A page is often 5-10 files so a page visit can generate 5-10 hits. The statistic is therefore not very significant for your understanding of the site visitors to your website. Disregard any company attempting to sell to you based on "hits" data as they are being misleading.

Bandwidth

Total number of bytes for pages, images and files downloaded by web browsing. Please note that your account's actual bandwidth can be much higher than that reported by AWStats. Your contract includes a limit on bandwidth and we will advise you should your account exceed your bandwidth agreement. However, we never turn off websites should there be a surge in your account's bandwidth.

Entry Page

First page viewed by a visitor during its visit.

Exit Page

Last page viewed by a visitor during its visit.

Session Duration

The time a visitor spent on your site for each visit. This can often be very under-reported because many client sites generate content from only one "page", the AWStats software finds it difficult to keep track of real visitors and AWStats can't track visitors over either times when the software updates, over the last day of the month or the last hour of the day. Lies, damned lies and statistics!

HTTP Status Codes

HTTP status codes are returned by web servers to indicate the status of a request for a page. Codes 200 and 304 are used to tell the browser the page can be viewed. All other codes generate hits and traffic 'not seen' by the visitor. They are 3-digit codes where the first digit of this code identifies the class of the code and the remaining 2 digits correspond to the specific response or error. They are classified in 5 categories:

1xx - informational
2xx - successful
3xx - redirection
4xx - client error
5xx - server error