All About Web Traffic

Introduction - What is Web Traffic?When hearing various conversations either from computer specialists or on-line business people, a phrase being that may be repeated over and over throughout the conversation, among others, may be that of web traffic. So, what is web traffic and why is it so important in the business world and in the computer science world? This paper will analyze the aspects of what web traffic is and where and how its influence is substantial.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_traffic), web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. It is a large portion of internet traffic. This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country.

Simple example graph of Web traffic at Wikipedia.o...

Click4WAP mobile traffic 2005

Web traffic graph illustrating the "Efecto Barrapu...

This basically means that web traffic includes the visits in various web pages measured in a period of time. This shows how some pages might be more favored by the visitors, what trends exist in the internet market and in general what the visitor wants to see when he/she visits a site. In general, this can be very helpful, since the company owning the website can constantly improve their offerings to the customers and thus either increase their traffic, or keep their current visitors even more satisfied. Despite the improvement of the website itself, the monitoring of web traffic can make an outsider, which is interested in investing in the cyber-world, know the trends, movements and likes and dislikes of the visitors so that he/she can try to give the visitors what they desire from the prospective website.

Bellow follows an analysis of how web traffic is measured and how and what one can gain from measuring web traffic.

Measuring web trafficWhen one wishes to measure web traffic, he she can view statistics found in the web server log file, an automatically-generated list of all the pages served. When viewing these logs, one sees the words "hit" and "page view". A "hit" is generated when any file is served. The page itself is considered a file, but images are also files, thus a page with 5 images could generate 6 hits (the 5 images and the page itself). A "page view" is generated when a visitor requests any page within the web site - a visitor will always generate at least one page view (the main page) but could generate many more (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_traffic). If someone, other than the owner of the website, or anyone controlling the website, wishes to view the traffic of a certain website, he/she can enter the address of the site in engines which measure traffic, such as Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/) and there all information needed is provided.

Information Gained from Measuring Web TrafficAs mentioned above, various types of information can be gathered from monitoring web traffic. This information includes:•The number of visitors•The average number of page views per visitor - a high number would indicate that the average visitors go deep inside the site, possibly because they like it or find it useful. Conversely, it could indicate an inability to find desired information easily.

•Average visit duration - the total length of a user's visit•Average page duration - how long a page is viewed for•Domain classes - all levels of the IP Addressing information required to deliver WebPages and content.

•Busy times - the most popular viewing time of the site would show when would be the best time to do promotional campaigns and when would be the most ideal to perform maintenance•Most requested pages - the most popular pages•Most requested entry pages - the entry page is the first page viewed by a visitor and shows which are the pages most attracting visitors•Most requested exit pages - the most requested exit pages could help find bad pages, broken links or the exit pages may have a popular external link•Top paths - a path is the sequence of pages viewed by visitors from entry to exit, with the top paths identifying the way most customers go through the site•Referrers; The host can track the (apparent) source of the links and determine which sites are generating the most traffic for a particular page. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_traffic)Opportunities for Business - ConclusionWhen looking at the above, it very easy to conclude of the importance of monitoring web traffic. Monitoring web traffic shows anyone interested, how to increase the visits in his/her site, make things more appealing to the visitors, make them stay in the website longer and of course through all this gain interest from various advertisement companies which are willing to advertise their products on the certain site. The internet is an ever-growing industry which will, in terms, flood the market in a few years, so taking advantage of traffic now, will lead to much higher productiveness in a few years.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_traffic http://www.alexa.com/