| Ad
Clicks | Action from a user clicking on an advertisement
to get more information. |
| Ad
Views | Display of an advertisement on the HTML
page a user is viewing. |
| Authentication | Technique
by which access to Internet or Intranet resources requires the user to identify
himself or herself using a name and password. |
| Bandwidth | Measure
(in kilobytes of data transferred) of the traffic on the site. |
| Branding | The
traditional marketing practice of associating a logo or "tag line" with
a company or product. |
| Browser | A
program used to locate and view HTML documents (Netscape, Mosaic, Microsoft Explorer,
for example.) |
| Click
through rate | Percentage of users who click
on a viewed advertisement. This is a good indication of the effectiveness of a
banner ad however as the Internet (and its users) has matured, the average rates
have declined. Traditional marketing concepts such as "branding"
remain viable considerations when considering the values of an internet banner
campaign. |
| Client | The
browser (see above) used by a visitor to a Web site. |
| Client Errors | An
error occurring due to an invalid request by the visitor's browser. Client errors
are in the 400-range. See "Return Code" definition. |
| Company Database | The
database installed and used by WebTrends to look up the company name, city, state
and country corresponding to a specific domain name. |
| Compression | The
ability to reduce the size of a file in kilobytes by prossessing with a utility
application. Popular compression formats for the web are .ZIP (typically for Windows
users) and .SIT (originally the standard Macintosh format but now also available
for Windows). Most files available for downloading on the Internet are compressed
to reduce the file size and thus the time required for transfer. Various graphics
formats are, by the nature of their specification, already compressed such as
JPEG, GIF, and PNG formats. |
| Domain
Name | The text name corresponding to the numeric
IP address of a computer on the Internet (i.e., www.nightshademedia.com). |
| Domain Name
Lookup | The process of converting a numeric
IP address into a text name (for example, 204.245.240.194 is converted to www.webternds.com). |
| Forms | An
HTML page which passes variables back to the server. These pages are used to gather
information from users. |
| FTP | File
Transfer Protocol is a standard method of sending files between computers over
the Internet. |
| GIF | Graphics
Interchange Format is an image file format commonly used in HTML documents. This
format allows a maximum or 256 colors in any given file and supports transparency
which allows a background image or color to show through. Frame based animation
is also supported and most of the banner ads are created in this file format.
It is best used for illustration/line art as opposed to photographic images due
to the limited color palette. Also see "JPEG" and "PNG" |
| Hit | An
action on the Web site, such as when a user views a page or downloads a file.
Note than a "hit" occurs on every element on an HTML page. Thus, a page
containing 5 separate images would be logged by server as 6 hits ... one for each
image and one for the HTML file itself. This can allow for an inflated number
of site visitors when someone uses this statistic to convey the traffic on a particular
website. "User sessions" should be considered
if knowing the actual number of visitors to a site is important. |
| Home Page | The
main page of a Web site. The home page provides visitors with an overview and
links to the rest of the site. It often contains or links to a Table of contents
for the site. |
| Home
Page URL | The local path or Internet URL to
the default page of the Web site for which WebTrends reports will be generated. |
| HTML | Hyper
Text Markup Language is used to write documents for the World Wide Web to specify
hypertext links between related objects and documents. |
| HTTP | Hyper
Text Transfer Protocol is a standard method of transferring data between a Web
server and a Web browser. |
| IP Address | Internet
Protocol address identifying a computer connected to the Internet. |
| JPEG | Joint
Photographic Expert Group is a method of storing an image in digital format. |
| Log File | A
file in which the web server records activity initiated by requests to the server
such as the IP address of the client machine, the file requested, the browser
version of the client, etc. Log files are used to generate useful reports by applications
such as WebTrends™
that tabulates the data in the log and prepares an easily read accounting of web
site activity. |
| Page
Views | Also called Page Impressions. Hit to
HTML pages only (access to non-HTML documents are not counted). |
| Platform | The
operating system (i.e. Macintosh, Windows 98, Windows NT, etc.) used by a visitor
to your Web site. |
| PNG | The
Portable Networks Graphics format is the newest of the "browser readable"
image formats (not supported completely in older browsers) and provides lossless
compression, various color levels including 24bit "true color", and
transparency. While most useful for professional image production it can not generally
attain the degree of compression possible with GIF
and JPEG formats. |
| Protocol | An
established method of exchanging data over the Internet. |
| Referrer | URL
of an HTML page that refers to your Web site. |
| Return Code | The
return status of the request which specifies whether the transfer was successful
and why. The "404" error is likely the most common error that a user
will see on the Internet and occurs when there is no file of the name specified
at that particular address. It is common for search engines to retain links to
pages that have been deleted or renamed. - Possible
"Success" codes are:
- 200 = Success: OK
- 201 = Success: Created
- 202
= Success: Accepted
- 203 = Success: Partial
Information
- 204 = Success: No Response
- 300 = Success: Redirected
- 301
= Success: Moved
- 302 = Success: Found
- 303 = Success: New Method
- 304
= Success: Not Modified
- Possible "Failed" codes
are:
- 400 = Failed: Bad Request
- 401 = Failed: Unauthorized
- 402
= Failed: Payment Required
- 403 = Failed:
Forbidden
- 404 = Failed: Not Found
- 500
= Failed: Internal Error
- 501 = Failed:
Not Implemented
- 502 = Failed: Overloaded Temporarily
- 503 = Failed: Gateway Timeout
|
| Scripts | An
HTML page which passes variables back to the server. |
| Search Engines | A
databased website containing information which can be used to find sites of interest. |
| Server
(Web) | A computer that hosts information available
to anyone accessing the Internet. Activity on a Web server is recorder in a log
file. |
| Server
Errors | An error occurring at the server. Server
errors are in the 500-range. See "Return Code" definition. |
| Site (Web) | A
location on the Internet containing HTML documents that visitors can view using
a browser. |
| Spiders | An
automated program which searches the internet. |
| Suffix (Domain Name) | The
three digit suffix of a domain can be used to identify the type of organization.
- Possible "Suffixes" are:
- .com
= Commercial
- .edu = Educational
- .int
= International
- .gov = Government
- .mil
= Military
- .net = Network
- .org
= Organization
|
| URL | Universal
Resource Locator is a means of identifying an exact location on the Internet.
For example, http://www.webtrends.com/html/info/default.htm is the URL which defines
the use of HTTP to access the Web page Default.htm in the /html/info/ directory
on the WebTrends Corporation Web site). As the previous example shows, a URL is
comprised of four parts: Protocol Type (HTTP), Machine Name (webtrends.com), Directory
Path (/html/info/), and File Name (default.htm). |
| User Address | The
domain name or IP address for the remote user. |
| User Agent | The
fields in an extended Web server log file indicating the browser and the platform
used by a visitor. |
| User
Session | A session of activity (all hits) for
one visitor to a Web site. A unique user is determined by the IP address or domain
name. By default, a user session is terminated when a user falls inactive for
more than 30 minutes. |
| World
Wide Web (WWW, the Web, W3) | The Web is a hypertext-based,
distributed system developed to provide Internet users an easy, intuitive means
of accessing information. |
