{"id":62736,"date":"2019-03-12T20:48:50","date_gmt":"2019-03-13T03:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/eu\/?page_id=62736"},"modified":"2019-04-01T11:13:15","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T18:13:15","slug":"logfiles","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/eu\/analytics\/logfiles\/","title":{"rendered":"Web Server Log Files"},"content":{"rendered":"<hr \/>\n<p>A web server log file is a text file that is written as activity is<br \/>\ngenerated by the web server. Log files collect a variety of data about<br \/>\ninformation requests to your web server. Some examples of the data<br \/>\ncollected and stored are: Date, Time, Client IP Address, Referrer, User<br \/>\nAgent, Service Name, Server Name, Server IP, etc. <\/p>\n<p>Your server logs act as a visitor sign-in sheet. They can answer<br \/>\nquestions such as: Who visits your website? What browsers do they use?<br \/>\nWhere do they go in your site? What pages do they view? Your server log<br \/>\nfiles can tell you:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What pages get the most and the least traffic<\/li>\n<li>What sites refer visitors to your site<\/li>\n<li>The pages that your visitors view<\/li>\n<li>The browsers and operating systems used to access your site<\/li>\n<li>When search robots and directory editors visit your site<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The above data can help you identify specific problems on your<br \/>\nwebsite. If you have many visitors but few sales, check your server logs<br \/>\nto learn the number of visitors that view your product offerings. Do<br \/>\nyou need ROI on search marketing campaigns? Your server logs can reveal<br \/>\nthe traffic and conversions generated by your marketing campaigns.<\/p>\n<p><a name=\"advantages\"><\/p>\n<h1 class=\"sIFR-replaced\"><span class=\"sIFR-alternate\">Advantages of Web Server Log Files<\/span><\/h1>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Data Ownership:<\/strong>  Your web server creates the log<br \/>\nfile as requests are served, and the data is collected and stored on<br \/>\nyour own equipment. Regardless of server location, your log files can be<br \/>\nstored on the same network serving your web pages (unless your website<br \/>\nis on a shared hosting environment).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Data Collection Flexibility:<\/strong> Your web servers can be<br \/>\ninstructed to collect specific data while ignoring other data. This<br \/>\ngives you the ability to choose the information, file types, server<br \/>\nerrors, redirects, etc., that you want to analyze. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Easy Implementation:<\/strong> No page tagging or other page coding is needed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Database Integration:<\/strong> Some web servers permit direct<br \/>\nrequests to a database application. If you have advanced SQL developers<br \/>\nyou can answer many of your web analytics questions without using an<br \/>\nexpensive analytics application.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ability to Measure Robot Traffic:<\/strong> It is important to<br \/>\nexclude robot and spider traffic from your reports on website use.<br \/>\nHowever, it can be useful to have the robot activity data when analyzing<br \/>\nthe effect of SEO efforts as this indicates indexing frequency.<\/p>\n<h1 class=\"sIFR-replaced\"><span class=\"sIFR-alternate\">Disadvantages of Web Server Log Files<\/span><\/h1>\n<p><strong>Proxy Caching:<\/strong> Proxy servers speed delivery of web<br \/>\npages to users but have a negative effect on web server log files<br \/>\nbecause the request for content never actually comes through to the web<br \/>\nserver. In caching, the requested information is kept on the Internet<br \/>\nService Provider&#8217;s machines, which are closer to the user (to speed<br \/>\ndelivery) as opposed to the content&#8217;s original site.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Browser Caching:<\/strong> Browser caching refers to the<br \/>\nability of your web browser to store frequently or recently viewed<br \/>\ninformation on your computer&#8217;s hard drive for speedy retrieval. This is<br \/>\nwhy you get immediate delivery with your &#8220;back&#8221; and &#8220;forward&#8221; buttons.<br \/>\nBecause the information is stored on the user hard drive during this<br \/>\nprocess, the information is not recorded, thus lost to the web server<br \/>\nlog files. Since users frequently use their back\/forward buttons,<br \/>\ninformation about visitor navigation is not available in the web server<br \/>\nlog file.<\/p>\n<p><strong>IP Address Unique Identified:<\/strong> Since the IP address<br \/>\nis always available to the web server log file; one would think this<br \/>\nwould be a good way to determine visitor uniqueness. This is not so<br \/>\nbecause proxy servers are frequently used to pass requests for<br \/>\ninformation to web servers. The result is that many different users are<br \/>\nidentified by the same IP address. <\/p>\n<p>This issue, and proxy caching and browser caching issues, are the<br \/>\nmost serious disadvantages of using web server log files as a data<br \/>\nsource. Estimates of the information lost have been pegged at 40 percent<br \/>\nor higher. This would translate to a 40 percent traffic undercount to<br \/>\nyour website if log file analysis is used by your web analytics<br \/>\nprovider.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Upfront Costs:<\/strong>  When using a web server log file<br \/>\nanalyzer you must purchase all the software, hardware and expertise in<br \/>\nadvance. This differs from the ASP model used for client-side data<br \/>\ncollection where you pay a monthly fee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A web server log file is a text file that is written as activity is generated by the web server. Log files collect a variety of data about information requests to your web server. Some examples of the data collected and stored are: Date, Time, Client IP Address, Referrer, User Agent, Service Name, Server Name, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101022,"featured_media":0,"parent":62564,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62736","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<title>Bruce Clay EU - Using Analytics to Understand Web Server Log Files<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/eu\/analytics\/logfiles\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bruce Clay EU - Using Analytics to Understand Web Server Log Files\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A web server log file is a text file that is written as activity is generated by the web server. 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