What do these stats mean??

[Joe S.]

This is not exactly an FP question -- but -- I'm certain that someone here
knows this answer.

I just moved one of my websites to a new host that has several choices of
statistics applications. I really don't pay much attention to the stats but
I was fiddling around with the stats a few minutes ago and found that 73
percent of the hits on my site were visits that lasted less than 30
seconds -- that's right -- 73 percent of the visits to my site were between
0 and 30 seconds.

What's the cause of this??? Is it robots or spiders or some other evil
probing my server or site?? What are they doing??

Thanks.

 

[Rob Giordano \(Crash\)]

Spiders / robots are usually easy to spot in the stats.

Less than 30 seconds? Could be your pages take too long to load and people
are leaving quick...I know I will leave a site almost immediately if there
is a flash splash page...or if the page is so chock full of nonsense
(verbosity factor)


| This is not exactly an FP question -- but -- I'm certain that someone here
| knows this answer.
|
| I just moved one of my websites to a new host that has several choices of
| statistics applications. I really don't pay much attention to the stats
but
| I was fiddling around with the stats a few minutes ago and found that 73
| percent of the hits on my site were visits that lasted less than 30
| seconds -- that's right -- 73 percent of the visits to my site were
between
| 0 and 30 seconds.
|
| What's the cause of this??? Is it robots or spiders or some other evil
| probing my server or site?? What are they doing??
|
| Thanks.
|
|
|

 

[.._..]

There is no stats program on the planet that can track how long someone
looks at a page. Hits are hits, the are instant moments in time and do not
have a duration.

User sessions have a duration, but 30 seconds is long enough for someone to
download one page. You DONT know after that if they sat there an hour
reading, or just hit the back button and continued surfing because the
browser stops communicating with the server when the page download is done.

My suggestion, before getting into stats is get a basic tutorial to get all
the baseline terms and releationships between them so you understand what is
being displayed. Sometimes that is even available in the help files of
whatever application you are using to view. (look for a "help" link)

Or, just keep ignoring and don't worry about it at all.

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

The raw log file will show how long a specific IP is connected to a site.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage

http://www.Ecom-Data.com
==============================================