% of Max Hits - The current item is this percentage of the item with the most hits in the report. In the Plugins Report this is the percentage of all reporting browsers that have the current plugin installed.

1 Page Visit - A visit that only requests a single page (non-graphic) but which may include any number of requests for graphics. Note that Entry Point and Exit Point do not include 1 Page Visits.

Agent - There is always some piece of software acting as an "agent" on behalf the visitor making the request. There is a standard way for that software to tell the web server its name, version number, and possibly other information.

The agent information is not always put into the log file. NCSA Combined logs contain it. WebSTAR logs agent information when the "AGENT" or "CS(USER-AGENT)" tokens are included. Microsoft IIS calls this field "User Agent".

Many web browsers "lie" about their identity. Some web browsers can be directly configured by the end user to send whatever string the user wants. Microsoft Internet Explorer will normally "pretend" to be Netscape Navigator, as in "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 95)", which starts with "Mozilla" the standard agent tag for Netscape Navigator. But it then indicates who it really is, with the "compatible; MSIE 4.01;" portion. Some browsers just lie outright, claiming to be Netscape Navigator without giving any hints that they aren't in fact Netscape Navigator.

Auth. User - The server can be configured to require authorization, the entry of a user name and password, to access a page. The Auth. User is simply the string typed into the name field of the authorization dialog. This name is not present for pages which are freely accessible and does not necessarily have anything to do with the actual name of the person making the request. NCSA Common and Combined logs both contain the Auth. User name. WebSTAR logs this name when the USER token is in the log format. Microsoft IIS calls this field "User Name".

Average Steps - For requests, the average number of steps, including the current item, that a visitor took to reach the current item. For everything else, the average number of steps per visit for all applicable visits. This is generally the average number of pages viewed across all associated visits. For example, in the Referring Domain report this would be the average number of steps per visit for visits referred by the given domain.

Average View Time - The average time spent looking at the page; counting only requests to the page with time recorded. Measured as the time between the hit for the page and the next non-graphics hit in the same visit. When the page is the last page of a visit, a time is not recorded.

Behavior - List of dramatic rises, falls, and spikes in traffic in the last month.

BPS - Bits per second. This is a rate of data transfer. Common modems are capable of 33.6K or 56K BPS. A T1 line is 1.5 Meg BPS.

Browser - The name of the web browser used to make the request. This is derived from the agent string, and suffers some of the same "lying" issues that it does (see agent, above). Summary decodes the all of the standard methods of partially hiding the identity of the browser.

Bytes - Bytes may appear as Bytes, KBytes (1,024 bytes), MBytes (1,048,576 bytes), GigaBytes (1,073,741,824), TeraBytes (about 1,099,511,000,000 bytes), or PetaBytes (about 1,125,899,900,000,000 bytes). Indicates the number of bytes of data transferred during the indicated time period or in response to requests that correspond to the current report entry. This total does not incude data sent as part of the HTTP headers.

CGI Arguments - A URL can optionally contain a question mark, and the portion of the URL to the right of the question mark is often referred to as the query string, search argument, URI query, or as the CGI argument. This portion is traditionally used to pass information to a CGI program for interpretation.

Code - See Result Code

Color Depth - The color depth that the display of the visitors computer is configured to use. For example, 256 colors or millions of colors.

Cookie - A web server can send "cookie" information down to a web browser, which will then supply that information back to the server along with each subsequent request. Some end users disable this feature of their web browsers. WebSTAR logs cookie information when the "CS(COOKIE)" token is included.

Crawl Date - The most recent date that a search indexing robot read particular content at your site.

Cumulative Percent of Hits - The percentage of all hits represented by the current entry and all entries that appear before it in the report. In the Window Width and Window Height reports this column shows the percentage of all reported window sizes that are at least as large as the current width/height.

DNS Lookup - the process of resolving an IP address (ie 192.168.11.137) to a host name (ie summary.net). DNS names are registered with the global name server. Most web servers can be configured to do DNS lookups on the IP address of incoming requests, but is more efficient to not have the web server do it. Either the web server or Summary can do the lookups. Someone must do the lookups if you want the Countries and Domains reports to work. If the Domains report is empty, it could be that DNS lookups are turned off both in the server and in Summary.

Destination - The first non-graphic request following the current request in a visit.

Domain - On the internet most computers are assigned domain names which can be used to identify them. Domain names consist of two or more parts separated by periods, for example "summary.net". You can refer to all of the computers that share some right hand portion of a name as being in the same domain, for example "www.summary.net" and "mail.summary.net" are both in the "summary.net" domain.

In Summary the domain name is considered to be the rightmost two or three segments of the name. Summary decides how many segments to use, in an attempt to make the domain name identify a company or organization. More segments might typically refer to a single computer, fewer to a country. Summary uses three segments when it suspects that two segments are indicating a country and for aol.com.

Download - A request for a file that is stored or decoded into a file in the visitor's file system, as opposed to being displayed on the screen as part of a web page. Summary uses the file name extension to determine if a request is a download. The set of extensions used to make this determination can be configured.

Duration - Used in Summary to denote the length of a period of time in seconds. For example, the duration of a Gap in Service is listed in hours:minutes:seconds.

Enter/Entry Point - The first non-graphic requested as part of a multi-page visit. This is the point where a visitor enters your site.

Enters- Shows the number of visits whose first non-graphic request (where they started) was for that page.

Error - A request which resulted in an error code being sent to the browser. The most common error is code 404 - File Not Found. This usually occurs when a request is mistyped. There are also many other possible causes of errors. Any HTTP result code, 400 or higher, is treated as an error by Summary.

Exit Point - The last non-graphic requested as part of a multi-page visit.

Extension - See File Type

File Type - The file name extension in a request is taken to indicate the file type in Summary.

Filtered - Log entries which are not included in the report either because they match an entry on the Filter configuration page or because their date was outside the range specified on the Time Units configuration page.

First Hit Date - The date that the item in question first appeared in the log files, during the period covered by the entire report. It may also have appeared in previous log files that are not being reported on.

Gap in Service - A period of time during which there are no requests, in a single log file, which is longer than seems justified given the average level of traffic on the server. These frequently represent periods when the server was down or had lost its Internet connection, but could also represent failures in the logging system, corrupt log files, or times which just happen to not have any requests.

Goal - Summary can be configured to track which visits contain requests that you specify as being the Goal. This is configured with "Requests to count as Goal" on the Details configuration page. The number of visits which contain requests matching the pattern is tracked for each referring domain, search phrase, and search word.

Graphic - A request for a file containing an image. Summary uses the file name extension to determine if a request is for a graphic. The set of extensions used to make this determination can be configured. Requests for graphics are not counted as steps in a visit.

Group - A group is a set of requests that you define used in the calculation of visit values.

Growth - The increase, or decrease, in average hits in the recent period compared to over the entire time being reported on. If there are twice as many hits/day in the recent period as there are over all time that is a growth of 100%. If there are half as many hits/day in the recent period as there are over all time that is a growth of -50%. Summary needs at least four weeks of data to calculate growth.

Hijacks - The number of visits accessing only graphics. This can happen for any of several reasons. One common cause is other web sites including your graphics on their pages. Hijacks can also be caused by AOL proxy clusters which direct different kinds of requests to different machines in the cluster.

Hit - A single request is often called a "hit" on the web site. Saying there were "56 hits" on an item means that there were 56 separate requests for/from/associated with that item. The item may be a specific file, a particular referrer, or some other use of a resource by a single request. Summary uses the term "hits" to denote the number of times some event occurred sucessfully. Failed events are counted as errors.

Hits Over Time - A small graph of hits for the most recent 30 days, or for as many days as there is data if that number is less than 30. Each graph is scaled to fit into the available space, which means that the day with the most hits always goes to the top of the column.

Host - A computer is often referred to as a host when talking about networks. Each computer is assigned a unique IP address. There are some exceptions, where several computers will share a single IP address, or one computer can have several IP addresses. In Summary, each unique IP address is referred to as a host.

Interest - How significant Summary deems the pattern of activity over the last 30 days.

Language - The language the visitors browser is configured to prefer. Sometimes the language the visitors browser is configured to display its menus in or sometimes the language that the visitors browser is configured to request from your web site.

Latest Hit Date - The date of the most recent request for the current item.

Leakage - The percentage of tracked page hits that did not have an associated tracked graphic hit. Leakage can result from robots accessing your site or from visitors who press the stop button or move to another page while the given page was still loading.

Line Number - The line number of the current item within the entire report. The first entry is line one, the second is line two, etc. When you are on the second page, the numbers start higher. This column never appears by default, but you can add it.

Local Referrer - A referrer is local to a site if it is from another page at the same site as the current item. A referrer with the "Preferred domain name" or any of the "Other local domain names" are counted as local.

Method - Each request contains a method. The most common method is "GET", which means simply get the requested item. A "HEAD" request means to get information about the item, such as size and last date modified. A browser will often keep copies of items in their cache and then use a "HEAD" method to check if the item has been modified since it was put in the cache.

Metrics - Numbers used as a measurement for standard of quality for comparing different items or time periods. Visits, Unique Hosts, Goals, and Value are all fields that might be used as a metric.

Others - Any request which is not for a page, graphic, or download.

Page - A request for a web page. Summary uses the file name extension to determine if a request is for a page. The set of extensions used to make this determination can be configured.

Parse Error - Lines in your log file which Summary was unable to recognize. This may indicate Summary attempting to read files which aren't log files, Summary failing to understand your log format, or corruption of your log files. Seeing a few parse errors here and there is normal. Any significant number of parse errors usually indicates a problem.

Path - A sequence of requests for non-graphics in a single visit. Summary only keeps track of the first three requests, the last request, and whether there were more than four requests in the path or not.

Pattern - Values are matched against patterns to see if they should be included/excluded. In patterns "*" matches any string, "?" matches any single character. Lowercase letters will match either uppercase or lowercase letters. Uppercase letters will only match uppercase letters. Backslash (\) can be used to quote a character, forcing an exact match. If you want to match a "*" "?" or "\" you have to backslash it. Likewise you can backslash a lowercase letter to match only lowercase.

On inclusion lists, lines starting with "-" are excluded instead of being included. On exclusion lists, lines starting with "+" are included instead of being excluded. The first pattern matched in the list is the one that is used to determine the inclusion/exclusion of an item.

You can also use regular expressions in patterns. The remainder of a line which starts with a single quote (') is interpreted as a regular expression and matched against the value. Summary uses Perl style regular expressions. When using both regular expressions and +/- include/exclude modification you put the +/- first and then the single quote.

Phrase - See Search Phrase

Physical Server - A specific computer, typically one of a cluster of machines serving the same domain. Summary gets the physical server name from the sub-folder name in Summary's logs folder. In Microsoft IIS Summary can get the physical server name from the "ServerIP" field.

Platform - The name of the operating system and/or hardware used to make the request. This is derived from the agent string and suffers some of the same "lying" issues that it does (see agent, above). Summary decodes the most common platforms based on internal rules which work with the vast majority of requests.

Plugin - An add-on for the visitors browser that allows the browser to display additional types of content.

Protocol - The protocol used by the visitors browser when requesting content from your server. Most commonly HTTP/1.1, or HTTP/1.0 (indicating different revisions of the HTTP specification).

Range - A range of values for the quantity in question, for which a number of occurrences will be reported. For example, in the Hits per Visit report a range of "8-15" indicates all visits with between eight and fifteen hits inclusive. The "Count" column then shows how many visits were in that range.

Rank - See Line Number

Region - A region of the world. For example, North America or Europe.

Referrer - The web browser generally provides the most recent previous URL when making a request; this is called the referrer. There are two major kinds of referrers. Each graphic on a page will show that page as its referrer. When a visitor clicks on a link that points to a page at your site, the URL of the external page containing the link is sent as the referrer.

The referrer information is not always included in the log file. NCSA Combined logs contain referrer information. WebSTAR logs contain referrer information when the "REFERER" or "CS(REFERER)" tokens are included. Microsoft IIS logs only contain referrer information if you are using W3C log format and check the Referrer item.

Reload - A request for an item followed by another request for the same item, in the same visit, with no other requests in between. These can be caused by the visitor hitting the reload button, but might result from subsequent attempts to complete a failed download, or because requests that would otherwise have been in-between, were satisfied by a cache.

Request - When you type a URL into a web browser, it sends a request for the item named by that URL to the server. Request can mean the entire request or specifically the name of the item contained in the request.

Result Code - The HTTP result code returned by the server. Common codes include 200 - OK (everything went fine) and 404 - Content Not Found.

Robot - See Web Robot

Screen Size - The size of the visitors computer display in pixels listed with width first and height second.

Search Engine - A web site visitors can use to search the internet. For example, Google or Yahoo.

Search Indexer - A web robot used by a search engine to index your web page content so that they can include your page in their search engine database. Note that many different search engines might use the same search indexer and that some search engines include results from several different search indexers.

Search Phrase - Summary attempts to extract the search string used by a visitor at a major search engine to find your site. This information is extracted from the referrer. The entire string is called the search phrase.

Recent - the "recent" time period. Normally used as a prefix, as in "Recent Hits" which means hits in the recent time period. The recent time period is the most recent two to three weeks. This includes the partial week from the beginning of the current week to the current moment, and the two weeks proceeding it. The current moment is the date of the latest hit in the logs processed by Summary.

Search Word - Summary attempts to extract the search string used by a visitor at a major search engine to find your site. This information is extracted from the referrer. Each word of the search phrase is counted separately. A word that appears twice will be counted two times.

Server - A specific physical server, ie the machine the server software is running on. The server may be determined by a field in the log files or by the name of the directory/folder containing the log file.

Skipped - Lines in your log file that Summary understands but which do not contain information about a request. For example, W3C ExLF log files contain several header lines indicating the format of the log file. Summary counts these lines as "skipped".

Source - The most recent non-graphic request before the current one in a visit.

Steps - Each non-graphic request in a visit is counted as one step. The first request is step one, the second is step two, and so on. Steps are normally displayed as the average of many step numbers for the same item from different visits.

Sub-Report - A report on a specific domain or sub-set of the content at your site.

Time between visits - The average, across the entire period being reported on, of the time between consecutive visits from a single host. Hosts with only one visit are not included in the average. Proxy servers and dynamic IP addresses can affect this number significantly.

Top Level Domain - The last component of a domain name. For example the domain "summary.net" has a top level domain of "net". There are many two letter "country code" top level domains, and only a few longer ones. There is currently a movement to increase the number of longer, non-country, domains.

Total View Time - The total of all view times for all hits which have time recorded. Measured as the time between the hit for the page and the next non-graphics hit in the same visit. When a page is the last page of a visit, a time is not recorded.

Tracking Tag - A CGI argument/query string added to a request so that Summary can track the origin of the associated visit. For example, you can configure your Google pay-per-click ad to direct visitors to "/?src=google" so that Summary can tell that the visit came from a Google pay-per-click ad.

Unique Hosts - The number of distinct IP addresses and host names making requests. This may be used as a rough estimate of the number of distinct people accessing your site, even though it does not exactly correspond to people.

There are two major reasons why this number does not directly count people, and some other minor ones. Some accesses are made through proxy servers or NAT gateways, machines that have a single IP address but may be in use by multiple people. AOL and some of the other large service providers always route requests through proxy servers. Dial-up connections usually have a different IP address each time you dial-up, so a single person accessing your site over the course of several different dial-up sessions will have several different IP addresses.

URI - Unique resource identifier. The name of the object or resource requested by the user. This is usually a path name specifying a file. For HTTP this is the portion of a URL after the domain name (and port number if there is one).

User - See Auth. User

Value - Summary can be configured to assign a value to each visit. The value is calculated based on settings on the Groups configuration page. Click here for more information.

View Time - See Avergage View Time or Total View Time.

Views - The number of times that a resource was requested that were not reloads.

Virtual Domain - When you are supporting multiple domains on a single server, each domain being served is often referred to as a virtual domain. Different server software implements or defines virtual domains in different ways. The strict definition of virtual domain is when a single IP address is shared between multiple domains. Summary uses the term virtual domain in any situation involving more than one domain. Summary gets the name of the domain either from the domain name that the visitor typed as part of the request, the IP address which received the request, the configured server name, or the name of the sub-folder in the Logs folder, and calls that the virtual domain name. In some cases these will refer to actual (as opposed to virtual) domains.

Virtual Server - When you are supporting multiple domains with a single server program, each domain is said to have a virtual server. Summary version 1.x referred to Virtual Domains as Virtual Servers.

Visit - A sequence of requests, all made from the same IP address, having the same agent string, and with no gap between requests of more than 30 minutes. The time limit is configurable; by default it is 30 minutes.

A visit normally corresponds to a single person moving through your web site, although there can be exceptions. A proxy machine used by several people could result in two different people accessing the site from the same IP address, with the same agent string, within the time limit. It is also possible for a single person to make different requests to your site from multiple IP addresses at the same time. Both of these exceptions are rare, generally accounting for a small portion of all visits. Very high traffic sites tend to experience these situations more often.

Web Robot - A program making a request that is not in direct response to a person making a request of that program is thought of as a Web Robot. Web robots are used for several purposes, such as search engine indexing robots, link checkers, e-mail address extractors, and update watchers. Summary has an internal database of common known Web Robots, determined from the agent string. Any host making a request for "/robots.txt" is counted as a possible web robot. The "/robots.txt" file is frequently used by robots to know which portions of your site should be avoided by robots.

Window Height/Width - The height/width of the window of the visitors browser. Some browsers include the height/width of the scroll bars and others don't.

Word - See Search Word