- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Jax
For those that subscribe to the Ashla Knights newsletter they always include their monthly site statistics. Personally I find it confusing, but it is useful to see how much we’ve grown over the years. I thought it would be fun to share our statistics as well, with a little explanation. It may still be confusing, so perhaps one of our more technically inclined members can explain better. I’m just copying from some websites for the definitions.
Unique Visitor – The uniquely identified client generating requests on the web server (log analysis) or viewing pages (page tagging) within a defined time period (i.e. day, week or month). A Unique Visitor counts once within the timescale. A visitor can make multiple visits. Identification is made to the visitor’s computer, not the person, usually via cookie and/or IP+User Agent. Thus the same person visiting from two different computers will count as two Unique Visitors.
Visit – A visit is defined as a series of page requests from the same uniquely identified client with a time of no more than 30 minutes between each page request. A session is defined as a series of page requests from the same uniquely identified client with a time of no more than 30 minutes and no requests for pages from other domains intervening between page requests. In other words, a session ends when someone goes to another site, or 30 minutes elapse between pageviews, whichever comes first. A visit ends only after a 30 minute time delay. If someone leaves a site, then returns within 30 minutes, this will count as one visit but two sessions. In practice, most systems ignore sessions and many analysts use both terms for visits. Because time between pageviews is critical to the definition of visits and sessions, a single page view does not constitute a visit or a session (it is a “bounce”).
Page view – A request for a file whose type is defined as a page in log analysis. An occurrence of the script being run in page tagging. In log analysis, a single page view may generate multiple hits as all the resources required to view the page (images, .js and .css files) are also requested from the web server.
Hit – A request for a file from the web server. Available only in log analysis. The number of hits received by a website is frequently cited to assert its popularity, but this number is extremely misleading and dramatically over-estimates popularity. A single web-page typically consists of multiple (often dozens) of discrete files, each of which is counted as a hit as the page is downloaded, so the number of hits is really an arbitrary number more reflective of the complexity of individual pages on the website than the website’s actual popularity. The total number of visitors or page views provides a more realistic and accurate assessment of popularity.
With that information in mind, take a look at our usage over the years. I put it in a google spreadsheet since formatting is impossible here. I’ve also included a handy graph which shows visits by month which shows a general trend upward. There is always variation month to month, so a graph is handy to see trends.
You can view it here.
Continual growth is certainly a positive.
Stryse
Obviously our unqiue visits are somewhat inflated, given that quite a few of us access IJRS from multiple machines… still its encouraging to see the growth in the YOY numbers.
True, but visits are always inflated. That’s why I’m not sure how useful specifics are. But, considering most people have similar habits, continued growth is a good sign. Also, our numbers are pretty similar to Ashla’s, which helped provide me a bit of perspective. I expect these numbers to shoot up for May and June as we start the class and people are excited and keeping it on their priority list.
I figure the trending should hold up pretty well, over time, and that that will give you the truest sense. I’m curious what the Year end total for 2011 will yield. Significant growth in YOY numbers so far.
I’m also curious. We don’t have much to compare it with, but 3 full years of data isn’t too bad.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login here