David M. Grub <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I work for a law firm in Pennsylvania and our website is hosted by XO > Communications. I want to utilize their Analog Analysis reporting > system available under the administrative interface. I know which > reports I want to run, but there is another we were wondering about. > We want to know if there is any way to track where the traffic coming > to our web site is coming FROM. In other words, if they are going > into Yahoo or Google and typing in "lawyer", finding our website and > clicking on it, I would like to know that's how they are getting > there. Also, if they are clicking on our link in another website > which lists lawyers from PA, I would like to know that.
If I click on a link on a web page (say http://www.example.net/page1.htm) that points to http://www.hhrlaw.com then my browser sends a request to the hhrlaw server. That request includes 1) The Request - the page I want to see: http://www.hhrlaw.com/page2.htm 2) The Referrer - the page that contained the link I clicked on: http://www.example.net/page1.htm. The referrer may be blank. 3) The type of browser that is making the request. This allows the server to send different results for different browsers, though usually this facility isn't used. The web server can also see what address this request came from (this isn't part of the request as such, it's more like caller-ID). This address is the Host address. You want the Referrer report. You might also want to use the Search reports, which can tell what search terms were used on various search engines, by analysing the referrer field in greater detail. The closest > sounding report would be the Host Report, but the majority listed are > coming from xxxxxx-xxx.proxy.aol.com which doesn't sound right. The Host report will tell you who is making the queries, not how they get to your site. But as you have found, large providers such as AOL share a small number of addresses between a huge number of users, and make the Host Report less useful. > They > said that the Referrer Report should give me the information I need, > but it doesn't look right. They say that it should show me where they > came from and that if it doesn't, that means that they came directly > to our website (by typing the URL) and navigated around. The only web > addresses listed are various pages from OUR website which, according > to the people at XO, means that everyone who has accessed our website > in the last 3 months since we started with XO has typed our URL. I > find that hard to believe. The people at XO don't seem that helpful > when it comes to this. Can anyone here help? Thanks! If you have a page with 10 images in it, then when I request that page, there will be 11 entries in your log file. But the Referrer for each of the images will be your page, so you'll have 10 "internal" referrers, and only 1 external referrers. If I then read 10 pages on your site (each with 10 images), there will be another 110 entries in the log, all with http://www.hhrlaw.com/something as the referrer, and only the very first entry will have http://www.example.net/page1.htm as it's referrer. This is perfectly normal, but by default, the Referrer report is only going to show you the top 20 or 30 referring pages, and they will tend to be such "internal" referrers. As the FAQ explains, you can avoid this with the REFREPEXCLUDE command: http://www.analog.cx/docs/faq.html#faq116 You might also want to check the Referring Site command (REFSITE ON), which will just list the sites that are referring visitors to you you. It's perfectly normal that your own site will top this list, and be responsible for well over 90% of the references to your site, especially if you include images in your reports, but at you will be able to see what other sites are involved. Aengus +------------------------------------------------------------------------ | This is the analog-help mailing list. To unsubscribe from this | mailing list, go to | http://lists.isite.net/listgate/analog-help/unsubscribe.html | | List archives are available at | http://www.mail-archive.com/analog-help@lists.isite.net/ | http://lists.isite.net/listgate/analog-help/archives/ | http://www.tallylist.com/archives/index.cfm/mlist.7 +------------------------------------------------------------------------
