Analyzing logfile data

One of the important features of web analytics is logfile. These are records of web servers and they give a breakdown of data regarding popularity and visitors to the sites.  They can analyze the number of unique visitors and their behaviour, giving invaluable information for the website owner. This system was more necessary when websites were a simple HTML page, but with the ever increase of websites with more pages it became more important to use page counts and page views. This is more useful and effective in giving a whole picture of how the site is faring among its visitors.

The increased use of search engines has played an important role in changing the use of logfile analysis. The system had to start to make a clear distinction between the individual visitors and the visits by the search engines’ spiders. There were many innovations introduced such as a dynamic IP address but logfile analysis managed to adapt to these changes and started to exclude cookies and single out visits by bots.
The difference between log file data and page tags is that the first is more independent than the latter. It offers more advantages than page tagging.

-    Log files do not need information from the visitor’s browser
-    Log files are available instantly while tagging pages takes time and pages need to be changed accordingly
-    Log files offer accurate data
-    Log file data is compatible with all programs that offer web analysis

Tagging pages and Web analysis

In the beginning, tagging a page was used as an analysis tool to counteract web caches.  Caching assigns cookies to a visitor for two main reasons.  It allows the possibility to recognize a repeated visitor and thus making a distinction between new and repeated visitors. Java Script is used to pinpoint unique visitors to pages. Page tagging removes web caching and gives more data than log file analysis.

These tools today are available to general public and not simply to webmasters. Combining the two methods – page tagging and log file analysis offers a great opportunity for website owners to have complete statistics on visitors. In fact, many web analytics companies know the utility of such tools and offer these two services together for the advantage of website owners.