| JavaScript Tracking |
Log Analysis |
| JavaScript code
is added to each web page that needs to be tracked on the
client's web site. When a site visitor requests a web page
the web page is downloaded to the visitors browser. The
JavaScript code executes in the visitor's browser and generates
a hit on a third party server that collects the statistics.
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An application or
service runs on the web server or computer that can access
the web server. The application accesses and processes the
web server's log files and updates a database used for reporting. |
Advantages
- Information about the site visitor's computer systems
(for example screen resolution and color depth) can
be tracked.
- Pages displayed in the browser that are cached (on
the client's system and on caching servers) can be tracked.
- The collection of statistics is removed from the
Content Web Server, which lightens the load.
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Advantages
- No need to insert Javascript in web pages, eliminating
the possibility of errors and saving valuable time of
web professionals.
- If old log files are available, the historic website
statistics is also available.
- If a database problem occurs the database can easily
be rebuilt using the log files as source.
- Errors on pages can be tracked.
- Bandwidth used can be tracked.
- Accesses to all type of files can be tracked.
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Disadvantages
- Javascript code must be inserted on every page that
you want to track.
- You can only track html pages and text-based pages
which the browser processes as HTML.
- Difficult to track errors (for example 404 - page
not found errors etc.). Impossible to track sources
of errors.
- Bandwidth usage cannot be tracked, because the information
is not provided by the web server to the browser client.
- Increases the bandwidth used and time taken for
a web browser to process a web page (additional JavaScript
in web pages and the additional request to generate
the hit on the Tracking Server).
- No statistics will be generated if there is an error
in the JavaScript tracking code.
- Clients use third party statistics providers as
Tracking Service is normally not provided by ISPs or
site hosts.
- Visits from Search Engine Robots cannot be tracked.
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Disadvantages
- Access to web server log files is required.
- The Operating System on the computer on which the
real-time statistics software is installed is normally
quite specific, although in most cases this type of
software can process log files from most types of web
servers on most operating systems.
- Junk data in log files can cause log file processing
problems.
- Caching of pages can be responsible for lower statistics
although there are solutions to reduce caching.
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