CNStats 4.1 User Manual
Visitors Counting Concept
All web-site visitors can be divided into users and robots.
Robots are search bots, various site-checkers etc. Robots are singled out with the help of "Robots" data dictionary. If a visitor's User-Agent record appears in this dictionary, then the visitor is considered as robot, otherwise he is counted as a user.
Users are those who do not belong to robots. Therefore, data dictionary is the explicit identifier for defining a visitor as a robot or as a user.
Users
These are visitors, which execute java-script counter code and download a blank image.
Upon using Java-Script counter types all visitors are defined as users.
Unique Users
Unique users are defined in various ways according to the counter type. When the code for PHP pages is chosen for a counter, then a user (IP-address) considered unique if he didn't download the site pages for more than an hour. In case other counter codes are used, then cookie is enabled, which expires at 23.59.59. As long as cookie is enabled, the user is not counted as a new one.
Hosts, Pageviews, and Sessions
Pageview – downloading of any page of the site with embedded counter code.
Host – IP-address, from which request to the site pages is defined.
There are "Pageviews", "Hosts", and "Sessions" columns in the reports:
- Pageviews – the number (sum) of all pageviews satisfying to the requirements of this column line.
- Hosts – the number of unique (non-recurring) IP-addresses satisfying to the requirements of this column line.
- Sessions – the sequences of web-site pages viewed by visitors satisfying this report column.
