Stats Stuff

Your Phoenix / MazeTech.com
web site statistical log files:

(an add-in optional MazeTech component feature)

Why we provide Optional Stats:

If you have this option, your MazeTech link to your optional SmarterStats server is always available to you. The concept of accumulating statistical information within log files and presenting them in charts and graphs is very valuable and of enormous help in maintaining and evolving a business web site.

A good statistic program is only as good as you use it.  A slight detour to our favorite and often confusing subject of "Google" is appropriate. There are other indexing engine companies such as Bing by Microsoft - and we use Google as today's popular example. We don't build web sites "for" Google or Bing - we build them for web clients, customers, and visitors, and we build them carefully "with" Google and Bing rules and suggestions.

Why we (always) pay attention to Google and Bing:

Webmaster Guidelines: We follow Google's and Bing's strict recommendations and Webmaster Guidelines on all servers and sites. Our understanding using these guidelines carefully helps Google and Bing find, index, and rank your site. Even if you choose for us not to implement or follow some of their strongest suggestions, we will probably follow them anyway for you.

In addition to our "Ok-For-Kids" foundation policy, it is also our corporate policy to pay very close attention to Google and Microsoft Bing industry specification and practices rules - We are professional hosts to strictly-business-only clients. We do not allow any abuse, misrepresentation, or inappropriate material  on our world-wide web hosting, content management, and e-mail systems.

Google & Bing 101: How they crawl, index, and serve the web:

Review the following Google example link...
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=70897#1

When you sit down at your computer and do a Google or Bing search, you're almost instantly presented with a list of results from all over the web. How do Google and Bing find web pages matching your query, and determine the order of search results?

In the simplest terms, you could think of searching the web as looking in a very large book with an impressive index telling you exactly where everything is located. At pre-determined daily visits in the early morning hours, our servers automatically and manually "spoon feed" Google and Bing our client web site contents and indexes to determine their most relevant information and results to be returned ("or served") to you when you do a search in your browser - especially if you use Google or Bing!

The three key processes in delivering search results to you are:

1. Crawling: Does Google or Bing know about your site? Can we find it?
2. Indexing: Can Google or Bing index your site? 
3. Serving: Does the site have good and useful content relevant to the user's search?

Crawling

Crawling is the process by which a Googlebot or Bingbot discovers new and updated pages to be added to the Google or Bing index.

Google and Bing use a huge set of computers to fetch (or "crawl") billions of pages on the web. The program that does the fetching is called Googlebot or Bingbot (also known as a robot, bot, or spider). Googlebot and Bing use different but similar algorithmic processes: computer programs that determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch and compare to their databases from each site.

Google's and Bing's crawl process begin with a list of web page URLs, generated from previous crawl processes, and augmented with a special map - Google and Bing calls theirs sitemaps - mostly data provided by webmasters. As Googlebots or Bingbots visit of each these websites, they detect links on each page and add them to a list of unique pages to crawl. New sites, changes to existing sites, and dead links are noted and used to update the bot index's.

On a brand new domain name or web site; it takes time - usually a few months for Google and Bing Stat Engines to build the complex files, and time to accumulate and compile meaningful data that can be presented. Phoenix / MazeTech builds and set log files in place the instant the domain or site is loaded on our servers - and we also build and maintain the very important Sitemaps - awaiting a few weeks activity to start reporting information. Obviously, the most valuable of all the stats reports are the length of time comparisons such as the Year To Date presentations of data - and the most valuable browse is to have your company and services show up close to the top!

There is a wealth of information (and misinformation) about this subject - please feel free to contact Google.com, Bing.com, or MazeTech.com for any questions or additional information.

Remember our rules and suggestions for building and maintaining the best indexed and placed web site:

your web site should quickly tell the visitors "Who you are", "What you do", What measurable and compelling benefits you have", "How to contact you", and other timely and fresh information about your history, staff, and products and services. Don't let some of the fancy and glitzy presentation technology get in the way of your core product or service messages...and above all, consider your web site a important and constantly changing asset that needs attention, consistent content management, and timely updates and changes...

Back to Stats - Logging in

On the login screen, type in your unique Site ID on the first line (usually a number between 1 and 5000), your Username, and your Password. If everything matches up perfectly, you will be presented with the home page for your web site statistical history. The name and password are always case-sensitive to match your original specifications. Once there - you can also make unique access points for others.

SmarterStats Login

One thing to notice on the Login page is the "Remember Me" checkbox. By checking this box SmarterStats encrypts your login and password, then you can close the browser window and not have to re-log in when you return. You will need cookies enabled on your browser for this feature to work.

The Stats Home Page

The Home Page is the first thing you will see when logging into your site's statistics. SmarterStats has organized some of the most useful metrics into the home page for quick reference. Data displayed is for the last 7 days unless your default is set otherwise.

  • Views and Visits - The number of page views that have happened on a daily basis along with the total number of visits  The industry now uses these Views and Visits numbers instead of the older and more general gross 'Hits' which are not as accurate.
  • Bandwidth Usage (KB) - The total amount of bandwidth used per day
  • Top Pages - The top 10 pages that have been hit on your site in the last 7 days
  • Top Referrers - The top 10 sites that referred people to your site. It is not unusual to see your own domain near the top of the list
  • Search Engines - The top 5 search engines that referred people to your site
  • Top Search Phrases - The top 10 search phrases that referred people to your site
     
  •  The very fastest and most accurate way to use the Statistical Engine until you have additional experience is use the favorites monthly-totals YTD we have setup for you.
     
  •  Click on Favorites - Monthly Totals or Weekday Totals or build your own favorites.

 

For a quick site activity and learning overview - expand the menu on the left under Reports, and click on middle bar: Site Activity

For more information about report items, refer to the Report Reference from the tree on the left

For consistent viewing and convenience you can also set your right hand default options:

We suggest:
Custom Date Range = 1/1/yyyy (January 1 of the current year)
Rows = 50
Sort = Month
Chart = Bar (3D)
Value 1 = Page Views
Value 2 = Visits
Filter Set = None

You have full control of your panel to change your password and add others to view your statistics. Please be careful and record your passwords and changes.

Terms Used

Sitemap - In general, there are two types of sitemaps. The first type of sitemap is a HTML page listing the pages of your site - often by section - and is meant to help users find the information they need. This includes the older style "Site Map" charts listings on complex web sites to assist visitors when they get lost.

XML Sitemaps - usually called Sitemaps, with a capital S - are a way for you to give Google (and others) information about your site. This is the type of Sitemap that Phoenix / MazeTech.com build and maintain for your web site.

In its simplest terms, the embedded Sitemap that we build is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a unique and up-to-date Sitemap helps make sure that Google and Bing (and others) know about all the pages and content on your site, including pages, subjects, and reference URLs that may not be discoverable by Google's or Bing's or other web bots normal crawling process. Another reason that consistency, text content, and presentation clarity are so important in maintaining web site content!

 For additional technical information on Webmaster's Sitemaps used by Google please visit: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40318

Bandwidth - Bandwidth represents the total number of kilobytes that were sent to people visiting your site. Bandwidth includes all resources requested by the users.

Hits - The industry now uses Page Views and Visits numbers instead of the older and more general gross 'Hits' which are not as accurate. A hit represents a request to your web site for a file such as an image, a web page, or a CGI script. One web page may contain several related resources, and as a result, a visitor viewing one web page may trigger several compound hits.

Page - The basic building blocks of any website. A website generally contains a collection of different pages that are accessible and viewable via a web browser. By default, SmarterStats considers the following extensions to be pages: .ASP, .ASPX, .CFC, .CFM, .CFMX, .CFML, .CGI, .HTM, .HTML, .IDA, .IDC, .JHTM, .JHTML, .JSP, .JWS, .MHT, .MHTML, .MV, .PHP, .PHP3, .PHTM, .PHTML, .PL, .SHTM, .SHTML, .STM, .WML, .XDL, .XHTML, .XML.

Page Views - A page view is a successful request for a file on your web site that is considered to be a page. These usually mean files with extensions such as .txt, .asp, .aspx, .php, etc. Views generated as a result of an error (either a 400 or 500 level error) are not counted as actual views for your site, and are kept separate from successful views.

Phrase - A phrase shows the entire search string text used by web users to get to your site.

Referrer Host - The Referrer Host represents the web site from which visitors to your site came from. A value of "No Referrer" represents a visitor typing your web site directly into the browser, using a bookmark, or following a link from an email client.

Search Engine - A search engine is a website whose primary function is providing a search engine for gathering and reporting information available on the Internet or a portion of the Internet

Visits - Visits represent the total number of times people have visited your web site. A visit is counted whenever a web site user requests one or more files from the web server. If the user becomes idle for more than a certain amount of time (usually 20 minutes), a new visit is generated when they come back.

Favorites

Favorites allow you to quickly access common report items and settings, similar to a shortcut.

If you wish to compare the activity of your company's site on a monthly basis and are interested in the trend of the web browsers your visitors use; you would select to compare last month the current month.

You find the Browsers report and click on the "Add To Favorites" link in the right section of the page. Using this dialog, you can configure your favorite to be the Browsers report with a date range of Last Month and names it "Browsers Last Month". Then repeat this process and choose a date range of Month to Date and name the favorite "Browsers This Month."

In the left sidebar, you can then quickly click between the favorites and see the results at a glance, making your statistical job much easier!

If you have any questions, or need assistance with your SmarterStats Statistical information or suggestions on Google or Bing indexing and placement - please do not hesitate to contact Phoenix Engineering / MazeTech.com