Site Statistics
And other dry, academic facts.
Recently, the web statistics program named Analog was updated on the server where my web site is hosted. The results of running the accumulated access logs from the last ten years through this program are interesting, to say the least.
Some of the information serves only to confirm what I already suspected all along. The Busbarn generates the most traffic (86% of it!), Sundays are the busiest times, and visits fall off in the summer months. So far, the popularity of this site grows steadily, with record numbers of visitors each month.
Other bits of data were surprising, such as finding out that nearly 9% of viewers are using America Online, or that 6% of you who browse in do so from New Zealand. Firefox has quickly become the #2 web browser, gaining a 22% share of that software niche.
Actually shocking were the revelations that I have had visitors from places such as Pakistan, Kenya, and even Bosnia-Herzegovina. I'm not exactly sure what to think of the fact that almost a full percent of visits come from US military sources, or that federal, state and local government workers have enough time to generate as many requests for information as all of the non-profit organizations combined! Maybe I need to find some graphics of mobile barracks, or submarine houseboats?
The results of running the program are lengthy and a bit confusing when viewed as one document, so I have broken the output into distinct categories, grouping the information with similar types, in several pages, which are accessible by using the navigation menu at the left of this page. Here are the descriptions of those pages:
General Report is an overview of the traffic on the site, with bar graphs showing total requests for files, requests by month, day and hour.
Organization Report lists all of the visitor's countries, breaks down the visits by service providers type (.com, .org, etc.), and lists the top 100 visitor's organizations alphabetically by domain name.
Files Report is a breakdown of the pages of the site by volume of requests for information, collated by directory and by file name.
Browser Report is an overview of the various types of browser programs and operating systems that visitors used while viewing the site. One viewer uses a browser program called "None of your business!!", which is a revised preference setting in what is probably otherwise a stock-standard browser.
Referrer Report references the data based on what link viewers used to enter the site, and lists any keywords used in search engine that returned results that visitors used to find the site and also lists any other sites in which viewers followed links from to reach my site.
7 Day Referrals is the same report as the one above, but it only displays data from the previous week's referrals, which makes it eaiser (and more fun) to follow links and catch people on other parts of the web talking about me...
Forum Stats For the first four years the forum was running on this site, I denied search robots and directories from indexing anything there. In December 2008, I allowed listing of the forum categories and topics for the first time. Since then, the forum has steadily gained members and posts, as well as spam, hacking attempts and all other manner of exploits. The time seemed right to figure out what, where, and when the visitors were streaming in, so the forum now has it's own statistics pages.
How the Web Works is a bit of the Readme file that is part of the documentation of Analog, and helps explain what the statistics reveal, and mostly, what they don't. Not to worry, I can't get your e-mail address, figure out your name or password, or anything else that sensitive!
These reports will be updated each Sunday morning, so the information they contain will be dynamic in nature.