Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site A website is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed with a common domain name or IP address in an Internet Protocol-based network. A web site is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via the Internet or a private local area network. It is a large portion of Internet traffic Internet traffic is the flow of data in the Internet. It includes web traffic, which is the amount of that data that is related to the World Wide Web, along with the traffic from other major uses of the Internet, such as electronic mail and peer-to-peer networks. 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 In computer networking and computer science, digital bandwidth, network bandwidth or just bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bit/s or multiples of it — not all web traffic is welcome.

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 A web search engine is a tool designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike Web and through Search engine optimization Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears.

Measuring web traffic

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

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 HTML, which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists etc as well as for links, quotes, and other items. It allows images and objects to be embedded and can be used to code in every page of the web site.

Web traffic is also sometimes measured by packet sniffing The packet analyzer is computer software or computer hardware that can intercept and log traffic passing over a digital network or part of a network. As data streams flow across the network, the sniffer captures each packet and eventually decodes and analyzes its content according to the appropriate RFC or other specifications and thus gaining random samples of traffic data from which to extrapolate information about web traffic as a whole across total Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic usage.

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.
• Average visit duration – the total length of a user's visit. As a rule the more time they spend the more they're interested in your company and are more prone to contact.
• Average page duration – how long a page is viewed for. The more pages viewed, the better it is for your company.
• 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 In computing, a hyperlink is a reference in a document to an external or internal piece of information. The most common usage is in the Internet to browse through web pages: some text in the current document is highlighted so that when clicked, the browser automatically displays another page or changes the current page to show the referenced and determine which sites are generating the most traffic for a particular page.

Web sites like Alexa Internet Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California, U.S.-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and website. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the website where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's web traffic reporting 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, but their reports are available only by subscription.

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 authorized 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 A political campaign is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making process within a specific group. In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, wherein representatives are chosen or referendums are decided. Political campaigns also include organized efforts to alter policy within any institution or site for U.S. The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the President The President of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States and is the highest political official in the United States by influence and recognition. The President leads the executive branch of the federal government and is one of only two nationally elected federal officers George W. Bush George Walker Bush ( /ˈdʒɔrdʒ ˈwɔːkər ˈbʊʃ/ ; born July 6, 1946) was the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 and the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000 (GeorgeWBush.com) was blocked to all internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic users outside of the U.S. on 25 October October 25 is the 298th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 67 days remaining until the end of the year 2004 2004 was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar after a reported attack on the site.^[1]

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 The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is a web server notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server to surpass the 100 million web site milestone. Apache was the first viable alternative to the Netscape Communications Corporation web server (currently known as, this is accomplished by the limitipconn module and others.

Increase web site traffic

Web traffic can be increased by placement of a site in search engines A web search engine is a tool designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike Web and purchase of advertising Advertising is a form of communication used to influence individuals to purchase products or services or support political candidates or ideas. Frequently it communicates a message that includes the name of the product or service and how that product or service could potentially benefit the consumer. Advertising often attempts to persuade, including bulk e-mail, pop-up ads Pop-up ads or pop-ups are a form of online advertising on the World Wide Web intended to attract web traffic or capture email addresses. It works when certain web sites open a new web browser window to display advertisements. The pop-up window containing an advertisement is usually generated by JavaScript, but can be generated by other means as, and in-page advertisements. Web traffic can also be increased by purchasing non-internet based advertising.

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.

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 A web directory or link directory is a directory on the World Wide Web. It specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links, search engines A web search engine is a tool designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike Web, guides (such as yellow pages and restaurant guides) and award sites.

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 In computing, a Uniform Resource Locator is a subset of the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular usage and in many technical documents and verbal discussions it is often incorrectly used as a synonym for URI. In popular language, a URI is also 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.

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.

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 A denial-of-service attack or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or people to prevent an Internet site or service (DoS attacks) have forced web sites to close after a malicious attack, flooding the site with more requests than it could cope with. Viruses A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of the owner. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, adware, and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability. A true virus can only spread from one have also been used to co-ordinate large scale distributed denial-of-service attacks.

Sudden popularity

A sudden burst of publicity may accidentally cause a web traffic overload. A news item in the media Mass media denotes a section of the media specifically designed to reach a very large audience such as the population of a nation state. The term was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks, mass-circulation newspapers and magazines. However, some forms of mass media such as books and manuscripts had already been in use, a quickly propagating email Electronic mail, often abbreviated as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages, designed primarily for human use. E-mail systems are based on a store-and-forward model in which e-mail computer server systems accept, forward, deliver and store messages on behalf of users, who only need to connect to the e-mail infrastructure,, or a link from a popular site may cause such a boost in visitors (sometimes called Slashdot effect The Slashdot effect, also known as slashdotting, occurs when a popular website links to a smaller site, causing a massive increase in traffic. This overloads the smaller site, causing it to slow down or even temporarily close. The name stems from the huge influx of web traffic that results from the technology news site Slashdot linking to websites) that overwhelms the site.

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 The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border, sharing it with census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national 'population and door to door censuses' , agriculture, and business censuses. The term itself comes, 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 The University of Edinburgh founded in 1582, is an internationally renowned centre for teaching and research in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. It is the sixth university to be established in the British Isles, making it one of the ancient universities of the United Kingdom 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.

See also

• Search engine optimization Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears
• Alexa Internet Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California, U.S.-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and website. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the website where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's web traffic reporting
• Traffic generation model A traffic generation model is a stochastic model of the traffic flows or data sources in a communication network, for example a cellular network or a computer network. A packet generation model is a traffic generation model of the packet flows or data sources in a packet-switched network. For example, a web traffic model is a model of the data

References

• Malacinski, Andrei; Dominick, Scott & Hartrick, Tom (1 March March 1 is the 60th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 305 days remaining until the end of the year 2001 2001 was a common year that started on Monday according to the Gregorian calendar). "Measuring Web traffic" at IBM International Business Machines Corporation, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware – retrieved 1 January January 1 is the first day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 364 days remaining until the end of the year . The preceding day is December 31 of the previous year 2005 2005 was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar
• Machlis, Sharon (17 June June 17 is the 168th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 197 days remaining until the end of the year 2002 2002 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar). "Measuring Web Site Traffic" at ComputerWorld.com – retrieved 1 January January 1 is the first day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 364 days remaining until the end of the year . The preceding day is December 31 of the previous year 2005 2005 was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar
• Ward, Mark (5 May May 5 is the 125th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 240 days remaining until the end of the year 2003 2003 was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar). "The Dangers of Having a Good Idea" – A BBC News look at the case of freelance A freelancer, freelance worker, or freelance is a self-employed person who pursues a profession without a long-term commitment to any particular employer. The term was first used by Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe to describe a "medieval mercenary warrior" or "free-lance". It changed to a figurative noun around the 1860s and was journalist A journalist is a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues, and people while striving for viewpoints that aren't biased Glenn Fleishman after his site was linked to from MacCentral MacCentral was a web site that provided news and information covering the Apple Macintosh, originally as an independent entity and later as the news service for Mac Publishing Web sites, including Macworld.com and Playlist, before being subsumed by Macworld's own brand – retrieved 7 July July 7 is the 188th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 177 days remaining until the end of the year 2005

1. ^ Miller, Rich (2004-10-26). "Bush Campaign Web Site Rejects Non-US Visitors". http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/10/26/bush_campaign_web_site_rejects_nonus_visitors.html.

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