Statistics
Google Analytics Stats vs. Default Webalizer Stats
This is a commonly asked question and there is no concrete answer. The best answer is that Google Analytics give you a part of the picture and server logs available from the PD/GO System give you another part of the picture. Look at the both of them and you're a little closer to the actual numbers. The difference is that while the server counts visitor stats based on what the server reports, Google Analytics counts stats that are reported from the Javascript code that you insert on your pages. If any of your visitors have Javascript disabled (unlikely) than those visitors won't be counted via Google Analytics. However, Google Analytics is smarter than server stats as it is more discerning about whether traffic is a human or a robot.
Common Website Visitor Statistic Definitions
The PD/GO System gives you access to a large collection of Website Visitor Statistics. To view your WebStats for your site, from the Website Manager click "View My Wesbite Visitor Statistics". (We can also add Google Analytics to your website if you wish.)
Hits - Represent the total number of http requests made to the server during the given time period (month, day, hour). Any request made to the server is considered a hit. This includes pages, graphic files, errors, reloads, etc.
Visits - Visits occur when some remote site makes a request for a page on your server for the first time. As long as the same site keeps making requests within a given timeout period, they will all be considered part of the same Visit. If the site makes a request to your server, and the length of time since the last request is greater than the specified timeout period (default is 30 minutes), a new Visit is started and counted, and the sequence repeats.
Files - Represent the total number of hits (requests) that actually resulted in something being sent back to the user. The number of hits that actually resulted in something being sent back to the user, such as an HTML page or image.
Site - A site is a remote machine that makes requests to your server, and is based on the remote machine's IP address/hostname.
URL - Uniform Resource Locator. All requests made to a web server need to request something. A URL is that something, and represents an object somewhere on your server, that is accessible to the remote user, or results in an error (ie: 404 - Not found). URLs can be of any type (HTML, audio, graphics, etc.).
Referrers are those URLs that lead a user to your site or caused the browser to request something from your server. The vast majority of requests are made from your own URLs, since most HTML pages contain links to other objects such as graphics files. If one of your HTML pages contains links to 10 graphic images, then each request for the HTML page will produce 10 more hits with the referrer specified as the URL of your own HTML page.
Search strings are obtained from examining the referrer string and looking for known patterns from various search engines. The search engines and the patterns to look for can be specified by the user within a configuration file. The default will catch most of the major ones.
User agents is a fancy name for browsers. Edge, Chrome, Safari, Mozilla etc. are all user agents, and each reports itself in a unique way to your server. Keep in mind, however, that many browsers allow the user to change its reported name, so you might see some obvious fake names in the listing.
Entry/exit pages are those pages that were the first requested in a visit (entry), and the last requested (exit). These pages are calculated using the visits logic above. When a visit is first triggered, the requested page is counted as an entry page, and whatever the last requested URL was, is counted as an exit page.
Countries are determined based on the top level domain of the requesting site. This is somewhat questionable, however, as there is no longer strong enforcement of domains as there was in the past. A .COM domain may reside in the United States or somewhere else. An .IL domain may actually be in Israel; however, it may also be loc Edge, Chrome, Safari and Mozillaated in the U.S. or elsewhere. The most common domains seen are .COM (U.S. commercial), .NET (network), .ORG (non-profit organization) and .EDU (educational). A large percentage may also be shown as Unresolved/Unknown, as a fairly large percentage of dialup and other customer access points do not resolve to a name and are left as an IP address.
For more help please contact support@pdgo.com