Web Hosting: website traffic statistics

This guide explains how to view information about visitors to your website. The result is presented in a simple format supplemented with graphics, which makes them easy to analyze. Annual, monthly, daily and hourly statistics are shown by site, by http address, by reference site and by country.

Accessing your website traffic statistics

1. Open your Manager (manager.infomaniak.com)
2. Go to Web Hosting
3. If necessary, click the hosting/domain name concerned
4. Click My sites and then Statistics in the left side menu 
5. At the top, select the site concerned and then the type of statistics required, as well as the period 

Terminology

• Hits
  Each request sent to the server is saved. This is a hit.
  These requests may be html pages, graphics files, audio files, etc.
  This figure corresponds to all server requests.

• Files
  Some requests to the server force it to send data in return, like a graphics or an html file.
  When this happens, this request is recorded in the files category.
  The difference between the hits and the files can be interpreted as incoming requests and outgoing data.

• Pages
  Counts the number of pages displayed on your site; the default extensions are .html, .html, .cgi.
  This count does not include counts of the display of graphics or sound files.
  This counter may be called: pages viewed.

• Visits
  When a request is made to the server from an IP address, the tool calculates the length of time since the last visit from this same IP.
  If this time is less than 30 minutes, the request is just counted as a hit, and if it is more than 30 minutes, the request is counted as a hit and a visit.

• Sites
  Each request coming from a computer with a fixed IP address is classed in this category. So, you will have an estimate of visitors from fixed IP addresses.
  Important! This category does not count dynamic IP addresses, i.e. people connected by modem or RNIS.

• kB
  kB (kilobyte) gives the amount of data in kB that have been sent by the server.
  This calculation is made from the log files themselves, which may result in some calculation errors.

• Total hits
  A hit is an HTML request. If a page contains 3 images and one text, it will result in 5 hits for each display, one for the page itself, one for the text and 3 for the images.

• Total files
  Total files gives the number of files called. In the previous example, this number would be 4, 3 images and the HTML file (text blocks are not files).

• Total pages
  Total pages gives the number of pages displayed; each time the Internet user changes pages within the site, an additional page is counted.

• Total visits
  Total visits gives the number of "unique" visits. A visit consists of several requests in close succession from the same Internet user. A person who views ten pages counts as one visit. The interval is currently 30 minutes, i.e. if the same person returns to the site 50 minutes after their previous visit, the tool will count one additional visit. The first page read is the entry page, the last page is the exit page.

• Total kB
  Number of kilobytes of information during the time interval. Each file is different in size, depending on the amount of information it contains. For example, a page that is 30 kB and contains 3 images of 50 kB each will increase this total by 180 kB each time it is displayed.

• Total of unique sites
  Total of unique sites gives the number of different origins for Internet users visiting the site. These are in fact the number of different IP connection addresses. Sometimes, several Internet users have the same IP address, e.g., if they are connected to the Internet from within a company's IT network.

• Total unique URLs
  Total of unique URLs gives the number of different "paths"; used when visiting your site. In fact, this number tracks each "hit" and so the paths to each file on the site are included.

• Total unique referrers
  Total of unique referrers gives the overall number of unique referrers for the period. A referrer is a site that brought a visitor to your site via a link. For example, if website www.site1.com has a link to website www.site2.com, and an Internet user uses this link, www.site1.com will then be counted as a referrer for www.site2.com. This information is of great interest to indicate where the Internet users who visit your site come from, or to help you check your presence on different search engines.

Precise statistics (excluding the overall view) can also be exported in CSV format to be interpreted by a third-party tool.

Meaning of "Commercial (com)" in the countries list

When you view statistics under "Geographic zones", you may notice that "Commercial" represents a large proportion of the traffic compared to other countries. This represents people connected to the Internet via an Internet Access Provider (IAP) with .com in their domain address.

It is thus not easy to establish which country(ies) are represented by a .com, because it is an extension that exists for several IAPs in several countries. Just like the "unresolved", who are impossible to identify.