San Jose State University : Web Services

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Web Traffic Analyzer::FAQ

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General

Q: How is Web traffic tracked?
A: We are currently testing Urchin v5. We expect to complete the testing phase by February, 2007, and use the feedback gathered to lay the foundation for a broad implementation. You can find more information on the Web traffic page.

Q: What sites are tracked?
A: Urchin currently tracks pages that are hosted on www.sjsu.edu. Other subdomains (www.engr.sjsu.edu, www.cob.sjsu.edu, www.science.sjsu.edu, etc.) are hosted on their own servers, and their traffic information is not available via Urchin.

Q: What is a "hit"?
A: A hit is a successful request for any file, including HTML pages, images, scripts, stlyesheets, etc. A request for an HTML file almost always results in many hits.

Q: What is a "session?"
A: A session consists of one or more page views by the same person during a specific period of time (currently defined as 30 minutes).

Q: What is a "page view"?
A: A page view is a request for a viewable HTML file. Embedded graphics, stylesheets, scripts, etc. are included in the page view. Page views are the most reliable metric for determining how many times your pages are viewed.

Q: What is a "referral"?
A: A referral indicates the Web page that contained the link that a user followed to get to the page being tracked (the site the user "came from"). The referring page is often a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo. If a user types a URL directly into the browser's address bar, or uses a bookmark to get to a page, then there is no referrer.

Q: How do I change the date range?
A:

Note: To select an entire month, click the month name in the Date Range window.

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Getting Started

Q: How do I log in?
A: Go to the login page and click on the 'Web Traffic Analyzer' link.

Q: I forgot my password
A: Request an account reset.

Q: What is the preferred Web browser?
A: For best results, use Internet Explorer on Windows. Firefox also works on Windows and Macintosh, but may not support SVG charts.

Q: What is SVG and how do I install it?
A: SVG is a graphics fomat that allows the creation of interactive charts. Internet Explorer by default should have the Adobe SVG plugin.
If you are not able to see the SVG graphics, do the following:

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Advanced

Q: How do I get data for one part of my site?
A: Some report views have a text area at the top labeled "Filter" which can include or exclude pages with specified text in their path names. If you want to see only pages in the "about" section, for example, you can enter /about/ in the filter box, and click the + button. If you want to see all pages except those in that section, click the - button.

Q: What is a robot?
A: The "Browsers & Robots" reports show which robots have been visiting your site. Robots are scripts that follow Web links automatically. They are used by search engines like Google and Yahoo to index Web pages.

Q: How do I find out how many visitors to my page are on or off campus?
A:

Q: How do I get images to appear in exported reports?
A: In Microsoft Word:

  1. Export the desired Urchin report to Microsoft Word by clicking on the Word icon at the top of the report. This will launch Word on your computer with your report as the contents of the document.
  2. Navigate to Edit->Links in the Word menu. This will bring up a Links dialog box.
  3. Highlight all the listed links in the window and click the Break Link button. This causes all the images to be loaded directly into the document.
  4. Navigate to File->SaveAs and enter the desired File name, with Save as type of Word Document (*.doc)
  5. The saved document will contain all the required images and should load properly in Word regardless of whether the computer has access to the original webserver or not.

 

Need Help

Q: How do I request technical assistance
A: Contact the Web Services Unit for technical assistance.

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