Absolute URL - The full Internet address of a page or other World Wide Web resource. The absolute URL includes a protocol, such as "http," network location, and optional path and file name. For example, http://surfstats.com/ is an absolute URL. See also URL.

Active Server Page (ASP) - A document with a .ASP extension that contains embedded server-side scripting. ASP-compatible Web servers can execute these scripts. On the client side, an ASP is a standard HTML document that can be viewed on any platform using any Web browser.

Ad - A text, graphic or banner advertisement on a web page that takes the visitor to another site when clicked on.

Ad Click - A mouse click on an advertisement on a web site, which takes the visitor to another site.

Authentication - The verification of a user by matching a username and password in a multi-user or network environment. A user's name and password are compared against an authorized list, and, if the system detects a match, access is granted to the extent specified in the permission list for that user.

Bandwidth - The measure of the traffic (in kilobytes of data) transmitted from the web site.

Bookmark - Also referred to as an anchor. This is a named location on a Web page that can be the target of a hyperlink. A bookmark can be applied to a string of characters or exist on a page separately from any text. Bookmarks allow authors to link to a specific section of a target page. A bookmark is preceded by the hash sign (#) in an URL,.

Browser - The program used to locate and view HTML documents.

Cache – An area that stores text and image files from a web site already viewed. When returning to the web page again, the browser loads the files from the cache, thus saving time.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) - A standard method of extending Web server functionality by executing programs or scripts on a Web server in response to Web browser requests. A common use of CGI is in form processing, where the Web browser sends form data to a CGI script on the server, the script integrates the data with a database, and sends back the results as a Web page. Use of CGI can make a Web page much more dynamic and add interactivity for the user.

Client (visitor or user) - An individual or program that visits a website.

Client Session or visit - A client session or visit is started when a request for a file (of any type) was made from a unique IP Address. If no more file requests were made in the cut-off or idle time, the program assumes that the visit was terminated. If a file quest is then made after the cut-off time from the same IP Address, a new visit is counted. The program's default cut-off time is thirty minutes.

Client or visit tracking There are three commonly used methods to track visitors. 1. The most accurate way to track unique visitors is by forcing them to log on every time they visit your site. This way the authenticated name is used to track a client's activity on the site. 2. Using cookies can improve the accuracy of tracking unique visitors. The cookie (saved on the client's pc) is used to differentiate between visitors that used the same IP Address. 3. Tracking file requests from IP Addresses. Determining the uniqueness of a visitor by tracking their IP address is not always accurate because most ISP’s use dynamic IP Address allocation. The following illustrates this: · A visit can be incorrectly counted as a new visit. The same user can have a different IP Address if the session was terminated and he logged on again. The program will count this visit as a new visit. · A visit can be incorrectly continued. If the IP Address was allocated to another user, which logs on to your site within the cut-off time, he will be seen as the previous visitor. · Some ISPs provides the same client with different IP Addresses during a logon session. This can increase the number of unique visitors significantly.

Client error codes - Status Error Codes in the 4XX range indicating the type of errors that occurred during a file/page request. Also refer to the Status Codes.

Cookies - Files containing information about visits to a web site (e.g., user name and preferences). The user’s browser provides this information during the visit to a Web server. The server informs the browser to store some of this information (and perhaps other) on the client machine in a cookie file. When the visitor accesses the same web site again, the cookie is automatically presented to the server by the browser and the server can then configure it based on the information provided or react upon the information in the cookie.

Database - A file containing records of information that are organized and presented to serve a specific purpose, such as the facilitation of searching, sorting, and recombination of data. Databases can be published on the World Wide Web to let site visitors look up information in records or add new information to the database.

Directory - World Wide Web pages consist of varying files. These files are often set up in a directory structure, resembling "tree branches". Directories are usually structured to keep similar topics within a specifically named directory.

Domain Name - The text name corresponding to the numeric IP address of a computer or domain on the Internet.

Domain Name Lookup - Also called DNS lookup. This is the process of converting a domain name (for instance www.surfstats.com) to an IP address.

Domain Name Suffix - The last digits of a domain name can be used to identify the country or type of organization. Possible suffixes for the organization type includes: .com = Commercial .edu = Educational .int = International .gov = Government .mil = Military .net = Network .org = Organization .xx = where the xx is a two digit country code, e.g. .uk for United Kingdom

Domain Name System (DNS) - A naming system on the Internet where components are known by understandable host names.

Download Manager – A program that is used to download large files from a host computer. This type of program can usually resume the download process after an aborted file transfer thus reducing bandwidth requirements. There are various download managers available like GetRight, Gozilla, ReGet, BullitproofFTP, NetVampire, etc.

Entry pages - This is the first requested page from a client or how the client enters your site. If the client entered your site from a search engine, this would be the file name part of the URL found on the search engine. The first page that it finds will be displayed and if none of these files are found, it will display the list of files in the directory - if permitted.

Exit pages - This is the last page your client has requested.

External hyperlink - A hyperlink pointing to a page or file that is outside of the current web, i.e. not on the current server.

Favicon.ico - An icon file that is placed on a visitor's links to a book-marked site (only in Internet Explorer 5 or later). Hits to this file can be an indication of how many visitors bookmarks your site. Also see http://www.favicon.com/ how to generate one.

Filters - A means of narrowing the scope of a report by specifying ranges or types of data to included or excluded. For instance only files with certain names, certain IP addresses etc.

Firewall - A method of protecting the files and programs on one network from users on another network. A firewall blocks unwanted access to a protected network, while giving the protected network access to networks outside of the firewall. A company will typically install a firewall to give users access to the Internet while protecting their internal information.

Forms - An HTML page, which passes variables back to the server. These pages are used to gather information from users.

Folder - A named storage area on a computer containing files and other folders.

Frame - An area of a Web browser window defined by a frames page. A frame appears in a Web browser as one of a number of different areas in which pages can be displayed. A frame may be scrollable and resizable, and may have a border. You display a page in a frame by creating a hyperlink to the page and specifying the frame as part of the hyperlink.

Frames page - A page that divides a Web browser's window into different areas called frames that can independently display several Web pages.

FTP - File Transfer Protocol is a standard method of transferring files between computers over the Internet. You can do so with a FTP client program.

GIF - Graphics Interchange Format is a raster based image file format commonly used in HTML documents. The PNG format is slowly replacing this format as the GIF format is a proprietary format from Unisys.

Hit - A request for any object or file that is on a web site. This could be an html page, a file or a graphic on a page. A request for a page can generate a lot of hits depending on how many sub-elements of files the page consists of. This is an indicator of web site traffic but not an indicator of how pages were looked at. Also see Page and User.

Home Page - The main or default page in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) format of a Web site. This page usually provides visitors with an overview and links to the rest of the site. This page's address is referred to as URL.

HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language is used to write documents for the Internet. It specifies hypertext links between related objects and documents.

HTTP - Hyper Text Transfer Protocol is a standard method of transferring data between a Web server and a Web client.

IP Address - The Internet Protocol address identifies a computer connected to the Internet. IP addresses are presented as four numbers separated by a ".". For instance 216.26.160.199 is an IP address.

Log File - A file created by a web or proxy server, which contains all of the access information regarding the activity on that server.

META tag - An HTML tag that must appear in the HEAD portion of the page. META tags supply information about a page but do not affect its appearance. These tags are used by some search engines when adding a web site to the catalog.

Organization - A commercial, academic, non-profit, government, or military entity that connects users to the Internet, identified by an entity's Internet domains.

Page - Any document, dynamic page, or form defined as a page file, e.g. .htm pages..

Page (HTML) View or Request - The request for a file defined as a page file. The page is basically what you see after the transfer and can consist of many other files. Page requests do not include hits to images, component pages of a frame or other non-html files. The number of page Hits = the number of page views. Also see hit.

Platform - The operating system (i.e. Windows 95/98, Windows NT/2000, Linux, Unix, Macintosh, etc.) used by a visitor to the site.

Protocol - An established method of exchanging data over the Internet (e.g. FTP, HTTP, etc).

Proxy server - An Internet server that acts as a firewall, mediating traffic between a protected network and the Internet.

Referrer - The URL of an HTML page that refers to the site. Referrer data is useful to determine how users came to your site.

Relative URL - The Internet address of a page or other World Wide Web resource relative to the Internet address of the current page. A relative URL gives the path from the current page to the destination page or resource. A relative URL can include a protocol. For example, the relative URL Test/Sample.htm refers to the page Sample.htm in the folder Test, below the current folder.

Reverse DNS lookup- The process of finding a domain name from an IP address by querying a DNS Server.

Robots - Also called search spiders. These are the programs used by search engines to catalog web sites.

Robots.txt - A file that instructs the search engine's robot which directories to catalog or to skip. If you do not have this file, it will show up as a 404 error (file not found) when a search robot visits your site. You can use an empty file.

Root web - The default, top-level web provided by a Web server. To access the root web, you supply the URL of the server without specifying a page name or sub-web.

Script - A type of computer code that can be directly executed by a program that understands the language in which the script is written. Scripts do not need to be compiled to be run.

Status Codes - A code entered in every hit or log line in the log file that indicates the status of a file/page request.

Information codes 1XX - This code indicates a provisional response, consisting only of the Status-Line and optional headers, and is terminated by an empty line. It is usually only for experimental purposes.

100 Continue
101 Switching Protocols

Successful 2XX - This status code indicates that the client's request was successfully received, understood, and accepted. Possible Successful Status Codes are:

200 OK
201 Created
202 Accepted
203 Non-Authoritative Information
204 No Content
205 Reset Content
206 Partial Content

Redirection 3xx - This code indicates that further action needs to be taken by the user agent in order to complete the request.

300 Multiple Choices
301 Moved Permanently
302 Moved Temporarily
303 See Other
304 Not Modified
305 Use Proxy
306 Unused
307 Temporary Redirect

Client Error 4XX - Errors that occurred due to an invalid or failed request by the client or visitor's browser. Possible client error codes are:

400 Bad Request
401 Unauthorized
402 Payment Required
403 Forbidden
404 Not Found. This is the most common error on the reports, and means that someone has requested an object that is not within your site. This could be because of:

Bad links to pages within your site.
Links within a page to a graphic that does not exist.
Someone misspelling the URL to get to an object on your site.
Outside links to your site that is out of date...

405 Method Not Allowed
406 None Acceptable
407 Proxy Authentication Required
408 Request Timeout
409 Conflict
410 Gone
411 Length Required
412 Precondition Failed
413 Request Entity Too Large
414 Request-URI Too Long
415 Unsupported Media Type
416 Requested Range Not possible
417 Expectation Failed

Server Error 5XX - Errors that occurred due to an invalid or failed task on the server. Possible server error codes are:

500 Internal Server Error
501 Not Implemented
502 Bad Gateway
503 Service Unavailable
504 Gateway Timeout
505 HTTP Version not supported

Internal Errors 6XX - Errors that occurred in the link checking program itself (these are unofficial error codes used to report problems).

600 Malformed URI
601 Connection Timed Out
602 Unknown Error
603 Could Not Parse Reply
604 Protocol Not Supported

SSL or Secure Sockets Layer - A proposed open standard developed by Netscape Communications for establishing a secure communications channel to prevent the interception of critical information, such as credit card numbers. The primary purpose of SSL is to enable secure electronic financial transactions on the World Wide Web, although it is designed to work with other Internet services as well. This technology, which uses public key encryption, is incorporated into many Web browser and Web servers. Refer to http://www.rsa.com for more on public key encryption and the subject of cryptography.

Server - Also called host. This is a computer that offers services on a network. On the World Wide Web, a server is a computer that runs the Web server software that responds to HTTP protocol requests.

Server Error Codes - Status Error Codes in the 5XX range indicating the type of errors that occurred during a file/page request. See Status Codes

Shared Client Session - A Session, which is, shared among 2 or more views i.e. a client who has visited more than 1 Page. Other Log File Analyzers shows this as separate clients, which do not tally with the total clients. Some show it as "Not Applicable"

Spiders or robots - An automated program, which searches the Internet and add data to search engines. On a web site the robots.txt file specifies which directories the spider should catalog.

Time Zone - This is the time relative to Greenwich Mean Time ( 0:00 ), e.g. GMT - 6 for Central America. Most World Wide Web servers record hits or requests in local time where the server is located.

URL - Uniform Resource Locator is a means of identifying an exact location on the Internet. An URL consists of four parts:
Protocol Type (HTTP),
Machine Name (domain),
Directory Path (/), and
File Name (default.htm), e.g. http://www.surfstats.com/surfstats/default.htm

User (client or visitor) - Anyone who visits the site at least once. A user is uniquely identified by an IP address. A unique visit is the number of unique visits in a specific time period from a unique IP Address.

User (client) Session - A series of consecutive requests from a user to an Internet site. A user session is terminated when a user does not make another request for more than 30 minutes. If for example a visitor with IP Address 1.2.3.4, visits the site, logs out and another visitor logs in an hour later with the same IP Address, there would be two user sessions but one unique visitor.

Unique visitors - Unique visitors are counted using the visitor's IP address or cookie information to identify the visitor. For instance if one visitor visits a site on the 3rd and 4th of August it is seen as two visits from one unique visitor.