Most people who run Web sites want to know their “hit” counts – how often the site in general, and certain pages in particular, are visited. Your Web server generates log files that hold information about every HTTP transaction: every time a file is fetched from the server, a log entry documents the date and time as well as the host name of the user’s computer. Log analysis tools convert your logs from almost incomprehensible raw data into useful summaries of activity.
Log analysis tools allow you to summarize and analyze your traffic patterns across time, presenting tabular and graphical reports that greatly assist you in tuning your content and your site. Examples of the kinds of reports you can get include:
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A list of the most popular pages on your site.
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A list of the least popular pages on your site. If a page you think should be popular isn’t, you can tune your site’s layout and link structure to improve its visibility so more users will find it. Some tools offer “path analysis,” showing what hyperlinks users follow through your site.
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A report showing how users arrive at your site. Your logs contain “referrer” information that says what Web site a user visited before they followed a link to your site. You can tell which directories, search engines, personal or other kinds of sites are the most popular starting points from which your users find your content.
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A graph showing activity across days, weeks, or months.
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A list of the most popular domains from which your users visit your site.
These tools vary from free, public domain tools to commercial packages costing from $100 or so to $10,000 tools. Extremely expensive log analysis tools feature real-time data analysis and sophisticated multi-server analysis functions that are required by only the busiest commercial sites on the planet. Most community information sites could choose to spend no more than $250 for an adequate solution.
Here is a sample graph from a popular tool, Webtrends.
Here is a list of some of the most popular log analysis tools:
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