Web Analytics

Web analytics refers to the methods employed to track the usage of websites and visitors' behavior. As the commercial impact of the Internet continues to increase, the importance of accurate web analytics also keeps pace. Two major approaches exist for collecting data on website use: logfile analysis and page tagging.

The older approach, logfile analysis, developed early in the history of the Internet. It was realized that the records kept by a web server on requests for its various web pages, known as the logfile, could be quite easily analyzed to gauge the popularity of each page and ultimately its value for commercial enterprise. A major problem for logfile analysis occurred with the development of web caches that can reload a page from a user's own computer memory, instead of making the request again to the web server. When this happens, the logfile will miss a site visit, thus underestimating the page's popularity.

The newer approach, called page tagging, was largely developed in response to this problem, which was quickly replaced in turn with controversies related to user privacy. When a surfer loads something on the web, page tagging uses JavaScript to automatically send information to the third party doing the web analysis, regardless of whether the page is cached by the user. This typically relies on cookies saved to a user's own hard drive that can be used to deliver far more information than just the interaction with a specific website.

Privacy concerns over cookies have biased the mainstream public against invasive data-collection techniques like page tagging, but the method remains invaluable for online marketing. Although both page tagging and logfile analysis continue to be popular alternatives, with logfile analysis the cheaper alternative for a company, page tagging typically delivers a broader range of information and escapes the uncertainty over web caching. An increasingly popular alternative is to employ both methods for better accuracy.