Bestdam Website Visitor Logger
+ Hit Counter

Log  Reading  Tips

Log Layout

The log file layout is as follows:

Date & Time

Page Visited

ISP of Visitor

IP Addr of Visitor

Browser/OS of Visitor

Referring Site

In order to maintain the columnar format, some values may get truncated, but the less important information is what gets truncated. For instance, with the ISP information, the node the visitor was on may get truncated, not the domain name of the ISP. The Referring Site information is in the last column so it will not be truncated. This allows you to check the search keys visitors used to find your site if the referring site was a search engine. (The first few words after "query=" are normally the search terms the visitor entered in the search engine's keyword field.)

What does it mean if....

• If the ISP column is blank, the ISP of the person visiting your page was:
  
  
  • not in your server's hosts file
    
    
  • could not be resolved via DNS
    
    
  • the page was visited by a search engine (check the browser/OS column for words like "spyder", "spider", "bot", or a search engine name)
  
  
• If the referrer column is blank, the referring URL could not be resolved or the person came directly to that page by:
  
  
  • entering the URL for the page directly into their browser's "Location:" line
    
    
  • going to the page via a "bookmark" they had created on a previous visit to the page
    
    
  • someone sent the person visiting the page an e-mail message with a link to the page in the body of the e-mail message
    
    

Note that, in some cases, visits from bookmarks or e-mail messages may be indicated in the Referrer column. It depends on the browser or e-mail program used.