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. There are many ways to monitor this traffic and the gathered data is used to help structure sites, highlight security problems or indicate a potential lack of bandwidth – not all web traffic is welcome. A website, Web site or WWW site (often shortened to just site) is a collection of webpages, that is, HTML/XHTML documents accessible via HTTP on the Internet; all publicly accessible websites in existence comprise the World Wide Web. ... Example graph of web traffic at Wikipedia in December 2004 Internet traffic is the flow of data around the Internet. ... Bandwidth is the difference between the upper and lower cutoff frequencies of, for example, a filter, a communication channel, or a signal spectrum, and is typically measured in hertz. ...

Some companies offer advertising schemes that, in return for increased web traffic (visitors), pay for screen space on the site. Sites also often aim to increase their web traffic through inclusion on search engines and through Search engine optimization. A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. ... A typical search results page Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural (organic or algorithmic) search results. ...

Measuring web traffic

Example graph of web traffic at Wikipedia in December 2004

Web traffic is measured to see the popularity of web sites and individual pages or sections within a site. Image File history File links WebTrafficGraph. ...

Web traffic can be analysed by viewing the traffic statistics found in the web server log file, an automatically-generated list of all the pages served. 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.

Tracking applications external to the web site can record traffic by inserting a small piece of HTML code in every page of the web site. HTML, an initialism of Hypertext Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. ...

Web traffic is also sometimes measured by packet sniffing and thus gaining random samples of traffic data from which to extrapolate information about web traffic as a whole across total Internet usage. A packet sniffer (also known as a network analyzer or protocol analyzer or, for particular types of networks, an Ethernet sniffer or wireless sniffer) is computer software or computer hardware that can intercept and log traffic passing over a digital network or part of a network. ...

The following types of information are often collated when monitoring web traffic:

• 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.

Web sites like Alexa Internet [1] produce traffic rankings and statistics based on those people who access the sites while using the Alexa toolbar. The difficulty with this is that it's not looking at the complete traffic picture for a site. Large sites usually hire the services of companies like Nielsen Netratings [2], but their reports are available only by subscription. // A hyperlink (often referred to as simply link), is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document, another document, or a specified section of another document, that automatically brings the referred information to the user when the navigation element is selected by the... Alexa Internet, Inc. ...

Controlling web traffic

The amount of traffic seen by a web site is a measure of its popularity. By analysing the statistics of visitors it is possible to see shortcomings of the site and look to improve those areas. It is also possible to increase (or, in some cases decrease) the popularity of a site and the number of people that visit it.

Limiting access

It is sometimes important to protect some parts of a site by password, allowing only authorised people to visit particular sections or pages.

Some site administrators have chosen to block their page to specific traffic, such as by geographic location. The re-election campaign site for U.S. President George W. Bush (GeorgeWBush.com) was blocked to all internet users outside of the U.S. on 25 October 2004 after a reported attack on the site.^[1] “Electioneering” redirects here. ... For other uses of terms redirecting here, see US (disambiguation), USA (disambiguation), and United States (disambiguation) Motto In God We Trust(since 1956) (From Many, One; Latin, traditional) Anthem The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington, D.C. Largest city New York City National language English (de facto)1 Demonym American... Federal courts Supreme Court Circuit Courts of Appeal District Courts Elections Presidential elections Midterm elections Political Parties Democratic Republican Third parties State & Local government Governors Legislatures (List) State Courts Local Government Other countries Atlas  US Government Portal      For other uses, see President of the United States (disambiguation). ... George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is the forty-third and current President of the United States of America, originally inaugurated on January 20, 2001. ... is the 298th day of the year (299th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

It is also possible to limit access to a web server both based on the number of connections and by the bandwidth expended by each connection. On Apache HTTP servers, this is accomplished by the limitipconn module and others. The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to simply as Apache, is a web server notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. ...

Increase web site traffic

Web traffic can be increased by placement of a site in search engines and purchase of advertising, including bulk e-mail, pop-up ads, and in-page advertisements. Web traffic can also be increased by purchasing non-internet based advertising. The success of the Google search engine was mainly due to its powerful PageRank algorithm and its simple, easy-to-use interface. ... Advert redirects here. ... Dozens of pop-up ads cover a desktop. ...

If a web page is not listed in the first pages of any search, the odds of someone finding it diminishes greatly (especially if there is other competition on the first page). Very few people go past the first page, and the percentage that go to subsequent pages is substantially lower. Consequently, getting proper placement on search engines is as important as the web site itself.

There are a number of other things you can do to increase your web traffic, including but not limited to building link popularity, webrings, offering free e-books or articles and classified advertisements. Webring. ...

Of the above mentioned items, perhaps the easiest one to do is building link popularity. This can be accomplished by writing e-mails to sites similar to yours and asking if they would link to your site. The second way of increasing your web traffic is writing to e-zines or to free article sites. There are many sites which will accept your written material, the catch is that you are giving it away for free. The benefit, however, is that you get to include a link to your site in the article, meaning every time someone clicks on your link, it brings free traffic to your site. Pixel ads can bring traffic to your site but usually will not get you a targeted audience.

Organic traffic

Web traffic which comes from unpaid listing at search engines or directories is commonly known as "organic" traffic. Organic traffic can be generated or increased by including the web site in directories (such as Yahoo! and DMOZ), search engines (such as Google and Inktomi), guides (such as yellow pages and restaurant guides) and award sites. Yahoo redirects here. ... The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as dmoz (from , its original domain name), is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Netscape that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors. ... This article is about the corporation. ... Inktomi was a Californian company that provided software for Internet Service Providers, which was founded in 1996 by UC Berkeley professor Eric Brewer and graduate student Paul Gauthier. ...

In most cases the best way to increase web traffic is to register it with the major search engines. Just registering does not guarantee traffic, as search engines work by "crawling" registered web sites. These crawling programs (crawlers) are also known as "spiders" or "robots". Crawlers start at the registered home page, and usually follow the hyperlinks it finds, to get to pages inside the web site (internal links). Crawlers start gathering information about those pages and storing it and indexing it in the search engine database. In every case, they index the page URL and the page title. In most cases they also index the web page header (meta tag) and a certain amount of the text of the page. Then, when a search engine user looks for a particular word or phrase, the search engine looks into the database and produces the results, usually sorted by relevance according to the search engine algorithms. // Uniform Resource Locator (URL) formerly known as Universal Resource Locator, is a technical, Web-related term used in two distinct meanings: In popular usage and many technical documents, it is a synonym for Uniform Resource Identifier (URI); Strictly, the idea of a uniform syntax for global identifiers of network-retrievable...

Usually, the top organic result gets most of the clicks from web users. According to some studies^{[citation needed]}, the top result gets between 5% and 10% of the clicks. Each subsequent result gets between 30% and 60% of the clicks of the previous one. This indicates that it is important to appear in the top results. There are some companies which specialize in search engine marketing. However, it is becoming common for webmasters to get approached by "boiler-room" companies with no real knowledge of how to get results. As opposed to pay-per-click, search engine marketing is usually paid monthly or annually, and most search engine companies cannot promise specific results for what is paid to them.

Because of the huge amount of information available on the web, crawlers might take days, weeks or months to complete review and index all the pages they find. Google, for example, as of the end of 2004 had indexed over eight billion pages. Even having hundreds or thousands of servers working on the spidering of pages, a complete reindexing takes its time. That is why some pages recently updated in certain web sites are not immediately found when doing searches on search engines.

Paid advertising

Dozens of pop-up ads cover a desktop

In return for a small payment many larger companies choose to advertise their sites on other popular sites. This e-marketing usually takes the form of: Created by me. ... Created by me. ... Dozens of pop-up ads covering a desktop. ... E-marketing is a type of marketing that can be defined as achieving objectives through the use of electronic communications technology such as Internet, e-mail, Ebooks, database, and mobile phone. ...

• Banner advertising: Banner impressions are sold by the thousands, and referred to as Cost Per Impression (CPM). As of 2004, prices range from $1/CPM for a run-of-network to about $50/CPM or more for specialized targeted runs.
• Pay per clicks: Advertisers "buy" keywords or keyphrases by bidding on them against other advertisers. The so called Pay-per-click engines sell their premium spaces showing in the searches the highest paying advertisers. Google sells paid advertisement through its AdWords and AdSense systems, which place sponsored links on search pages. Overture, now owned by Yahoo!, is one of the most popular pay-per-click advertising venues.

As users got used to seeing banners, some companies chose to make the advertisements more intrusive – pop-up ads became particularly popular to attract attention. However, most people consider pop-ups a nuisance and several software companies offer free pop-up blockers. Microsoft included a pop-up blocker in Service Pack 2 of Windows XP. A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. ... Cost Per Impression is a phrase often used in online advertising and marketing related to web traffic. ... Pay per click, or PPC, is an advertising technique used on websites, especially search engines. ... A Google promotional graphic, highlighting AdWords AdWords is Googles flagship advertising product and main source of revenue. ... AdSense is an ad serving program run by Google. ... Overture (French ouverture, meaning opening) in music is the instrumental introduction to a dramatic, choral or, occasionally, instrumental composition. ... Yahoo redirects here. ... Dozens of pop-up ads covering a desktop. ...

Traffic overload

Too much web traffic can dramatically slow down or even prevent all access to a web site. This is caused by more file requests going to the server than it can handle and may be an intentional attack on the site or simply caused by over-popularity. Large scale web sites with numerous servers can often cope with the traffic required and it is more likely that smaller services are affected by traffic overload.

Denial of service attacks

Denial-of-service attacks (DoS attacks) have forced web sites to close after a malicious attack, flooding the site with more requests than it could cope with. Viruses have also been used to co-ordinate large scale distributed denial-of-service attacks. DoS redirects here. ... A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user. ...

Sudden popularity

A sudden burst of publicity may accidentally cause a web traffic overload. A news item in the media, a quickly propagating email, or a link from a popular site may cause such a boost in visitors (sometimes called a flash crowd) that overwhelms the site. E-mail, or email, is short for electronic mail and is a method of composing, sending, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems. ... Flash Crowd was a 1973 short story by science fiction author Larry Niven, one of a series about the consequences of instantaneous, practically free transfer booths that could take one anywhere on Earth in milliseconds. ...

Web sites have been forced to close after an unexpected mass increase of traffic, particularly those run by an individual leasing the bandwidth from an ISP or hosting site. Some sites backed by large companies running their own servers have also been caught out by the problems of overpopularity. When first announced, the Vision of Britain Through Time site, containing information taken from the 1901 UK census, was advertised on numerous television programmes and causing such interest that the site had to be taken offline until different arrangements were made to cope with the traffic. The site was hosted by a project at the University of Edinburgh and they had not foreseen the amount of bandwidth and the server load that would be required. Ironically, by the time the site was able to cope with the traffic both the interest and the free advertisements of the site had greatly slowed, giving them excess capacity. Year 1901 (MCMI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Monday [1] of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Image:1870 census Lindauer Weber 01. ... The University of Edinburgh (Scottish Gaelic: ), founded in 1582,[4] is a renowned centre for teaching and research in Edinburgh, Scotland. ...

See also

• Search engine optimization
• Traffic exchange

A typical search results page Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural (organic or algorithmic) search results. ... A traffic exchange is a type of website on the Internet, which provides a service for webmasters to exchange of traffic. ...

References

• Malacinski, Andrei; Dominick, Scott & Hartrick, Tom (1 March 2001). "Measuring Web traffic" at IBM – retrieved 1 January 2005
• Machlis, Sharon (17 June 2002). "Measuring Web Site Traffic" at ComputerWorld.com – retrieved 1 January 2005
• Ward, Mark (5 May 2003). "The Dangers of Having a Good Idea" – A BBC News look at the case of freelance journalist Glenn Fleishman after his site was linked to from MacCentral – retrieved 7 July 2005

1. ^ Miller, Rich. "Bush Campaign Web Site Rejects Non-US Visitors", 2004-10-26. 

is the 60th day of the year (61st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... For other uses, see IBM (disambiguation) and Big Blue. ... is the 1st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 168th day of the year (169th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Also see: 2002 (number). ... is the 1st day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 125th day of the year (126th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A freelancer or freelance worker is a person who pursues a profession without a long-term commitment to any one employer. ... For other uses, see Journalist (disambiguation). ... MacCentral is the news service that provides news and information for Mac Publishing Web sites, including Macworld. ... is the 188th day of the year (189th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 299th day of the year (300th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

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• Web Numbers: What's Real? by BusinessWeek Online
• "Web traffic analysis could save your site" by ZDNet
• "Websites strain under net traffic load" by The Register
• Alexa.com – monitors web traffic of people who use its toolbar. Reports available free.
• Nielsen Netratings – commercial web monitoring service used by large sites. Most reports are by subscription only, but the top 10 list is usually free.
• TrafficEstimate.com – Free tool that allows you to estimate the volume of traffic that a website gets.
• Google Guy recommendations on building traffic – Recommendations on building traffic from an ex-employee of Google.
• Introduction and Chapter 1 excerpt from Practical Web Traffic Analysis (ISBN 1-904151-18-3, 2002)
• "Web Traffic Analytics and User Experience" by Fran Diamond at boxesandarrows.com