Web statistics are one of the surest ways of tracking down a poor webmaster - because under no circumstances will that webmaster let you see them. He or she will offer you "digests" (Heavily edited needless to say), will regret that your server does not have statistics installed (highly improbable), or will just say "Im sorry?" and change the subject.

The excuses for sitting on this crucial source of data are many and various because Webstats alias web server statistics are the only cast-iron method of showing how well - or how badly - your internet page is actually doing. Used in a positive fashion with a cooperative webmaster, web stats are the ideal fine-tuning tool for improving your web sites performance and discovering who your customers are, what they are doing on your website and how you may help them to do it better.

This is going to be a simple journey through the basic terminology, so that when you are confronted by the data in question there will be no mysteries for you.

Generally there are two flavours of statistics programs, although others do exist. Either "Awstats" or "Webstats" should be preinstalled on your server and will only require accessing with the password for your hosting. The task they perform and the terminology they utilize is virtually the same, I just find the Awstats interface a little clearer.

How it works.

The server where your internet page lives is cleverer than you might think. It is aware of a number of factors about the everybody viewing your website . It notes where they are from, what pages they request or download, how long they stay on page and even where they are from. Every web server does this.

For the paranoid, the server does not know your title and address - but it does understand that someone from IP address 195.258.458.102 connected at 22.45 (server measure ) and requested the page "index.htm" which was successfully downloaded. Each request, its source and the result of the request goes into the log files on the server. Awstats and the like read this data and present it all as brain friendly to read graphs and tables using the following standard terminology.

What it Means.

Phrases like "monthly totals" you may most likely puzzle out without my help! The slightly more complex stuff is as follows:

Hits. Hits are for impressing the uninitiated. One page with four images on it makes five hits. This measurement is of very limited value and might be safely ignored. Visiting our five-document page and hitting "refresh" three times will get you fifteen hits. Fun - but of very limited assessment of value.

Files. A "hit" that actually returned something from the server. (Not all hits return data - files might be cached on individual computers and so not absolutely need downloading or files might be missing and so not downloadable. Missing pages - for example - are "hits" but not "files