Definition:
Website statistics or Web States includes all information about any particular site such as page views, hits, traffic, bandwidth used and other important information. Popular web statistic, third party software are Analog, Webalizer and AWStates, WebTrends.

Suppose you have hosted your new domain and it is already running. Now you have done some advertisement to get people to visit. But, you are thinking that how you will know whether people are visiting your site or not..!! The solution is: you get all the details about your website visits by using third party software as listed above. Most website hosting provider includes this facility into their packages. Those software provide you all kind of details about visitors. When visitors visit your website; they are logged by the web server. Web server creates log files automatically, which contains the information such like the IP address of the visitor, how long your web pages are visited, from where user comes at your site (i.e. from search engines by using which key words, or directly from the URL of your website), which browser they are using, which actual page is visited and many more. But the problem is the log files are impossible to make readable practically by human beings. Log files are actually long lists of numbers, symbols and words which are encrypted and very hard to read or decrypt it.

This problem can be solved by static software such like Analog, Webalizer and AWStates, WebTrends. These software will take these encrypted (hard to read and understand) files and convert them into a format that is easy for the user to understand and readable. Most software creates the charts and reports from log files and also some software depicted what the visitors are viewing on your webpage. You can see the web site statistics from the control panel of your domain which is provided by your host. The main reason to use the website statistics software is, all software are free which are listed above. These software explains all the required details for your website.

Hits Count:

The states software provide you all kinds of interesting information about your website traffic, but it is not all of it is really that important. Let’s have a look an example, the software stats show all the number of hits the website has received. The hits are a little false though they are not the number of people visiting your site. Hits are actually requests for files. Hence, every single file that gets requested logs 1 hit. Suppose, your website contains 7 images and 3 include files, your web statistic software will count 11 hits every time that page gets loaded. 1 hit for your page, 7 hits for 7 images and 3 hits for the 3 include files. So total is 1+7+3 = 11 hits.

Importance of Web States:

[1] You can see the number of visits your site has obtained.
[2] you can use this information to see which pages are most popular and which are less. You can determine the page view and the importance of the page.
[3] Search engine keywords improvement.
[4] By tracking this states and changing the required things, you can improve your web site’s success with your visitors.

-Alex R.