15 Importance of using Traffic logs

Traffic logs or server log is the automated files created at the server ends.It have very valuable data associated with the website.Any admin and webmaster can access these log files but it is not available for normal users.Traffic logs are very important in maintaining the effective administration of web site,marketing and maintenance of the server. Their are 15 importance of using traffic logs listed as follows:

1. Analyzing the Page Popularity :Making a website is not just enough,you have to keep an eye on the popularity of the pages and posts your are dealing with.Analysis of pages-url are based on the data that reflects statistics of different pages-url on the basis of Viewed times,Average size,Entry,Exit.In a few simple words “page popularity is the pages getting maximum hits from the out site visitors”.Traffic logs are seriously plays very important role in capturing these data.For example have a look on the below screenshot showing some page url popularity against the no of hits.
2. Incoming Links :It is very necessary to have the information about the sites and the sources where your sites are linked in.Incoming links from an internet search engine and links from an external page (other web sites except search engines) are the two factors which track the detailed information of all the data associated with the outside source linkage.
   For example have a look on the below screenshot showing the links from the different search engines
3. Busy Days and Hours : If you are a blogger or a webmaster then you must have the knowledge of the times and days when your site gets the best hits(maximum viewers).By analyzing the busy days of the week ,you can make sure to post your best entries.By analyzing the busy hours of the days, you can find when you disclose the best news so that it can reach to utmost users and subscribers.For example have a look on the below screenshot indicating the hourly statics of the honeytechblog.com
4. Traffic from Other Sites :Traffic from other sites keeps track of the all the websites sites that are buzzing about you.It provides the page rank juice and boost in the alexa traffic rankings.
5. Search Engine Queries : Traffic logs also tracks the search engine queries.It gives the details information about the Search Keyphrases and Search Keywords which is been searched to land into the website from search engines.For example have a look on the below screenshot
6. Authenticated users : For many security reasons you have to know about the types of users visiting your website.On normal blogs and website,the most of the users are un authenticated.Users are also authenticated via SSL certificates and usually normal websites doesn’t use it but if you are into e-business then you must have the logs about all the authenticated users.
7. Operating Systems : If you are technical company or product base company then you should know about the type of OS your viewers are using.This helps in targeting the niche and direction for your content and product as well.Traffic logs tracks the OS used by visitors while visiting your website.
8. Type of Browsers: I think you should know that traffic logs not only track the system information but they are also capable of tracking the type of browsers you are using.Why it is important to know about the browsers ? The answer to this question is quite simple, It is very important for the marketing and technical dependency of your website and products.For example you gave more preference to Firefox than Opera users or similar things.
9. Note: Traffic logs can also track the following information :
   • Browsers with Java support
   • Browsers with Macromedia Director Support
   • Browsers with Flash Support
   • Browsers with Real audio playing support
   • Browsers with Quictime audio playing support
   • Browsers with Windows Media audio playing
   • Browsers with PDF support
10. Visit durations : It is the amount of the time visitors are sparing on your website.Usually the new viewers are between 0s-30s.It is very important to present the enough content and stuff for the users, if they won’t find your page interesting then they will kick off quickly.Secondly , most of the times heavy loading websites and poor designs irritation the visitors to close the navigation tabs of your page.So it is very important to know about your visitors and they trends of using your website.For example have a look on the below screenshot showing a normal log files with the visitor durations data
11. Files type : It gives the logs of different files served by your web server.For example amount of time “HTML or XML static page” hits by the users and amount of bandwidth consumed by it.
12. Robots/Spiders visitors :A robots or spiders are simply web crawler which is a dedicated computer program that browses the whole internet and its website in regular interval of time.It have a defined method and is generally automated.They are used to create a copy of all the visited pages and it is often known as “indexing of website”.It is very important to decide the private and public content of your website so you should allow your website for being indexed/crawl by the robots.You should also decide which page to allow for the visitors and which page to restrict.Generally traffic logs tracks all the robots visiting the site and list the number of hits ,amount of bandwidth they are consuming in fetching the data. For example have a look on the below screenshot showing the different robots and amount of hits and bandwidth they are consuming on honeytechblog
13. Countries : It keep track about the countries visiting your webpage and density of the hits coming from that. For example have a look on the below screenshot hits from different countries on honeytechblog
14. Hosts : Some times hacker try to get down your site so hosts gives the detailed information’s of the IP used by the computer that are visiting the webpage.Traffic logs tracks most of the visitors ip into a file.
15. Monthly history : It servers the amount of hits and pages views you get every months.More over it stores the monthly data of the traffic logs for serving in futures.It is often used in making monthly reports at the year ends.
16. HTTP Errors: Some time visitors comes to the pages where nothing exits and they gets the “Document Not Found” errors.Similarly their are following types of errors which are tracked by the traffic logs:
    • 400 Error - Bad Request
    • 404 Error - Document Not Found
    • 302 Error - Moved temporarily (redirect)
    • 307 Error - Moved temporarily
    • 500 Error - Internal server Error
    • 206 Error - Partial Content
    • 301 Error - Moved permanently (redirect)
    • 403 Error - Forbidden
    • 405 Error - Method not allowed

Now,I hope you understand the important of traffic logs.Moreover if you are not aware with IT-Acts then these traffic logs are the only way to track the illegal activity against your websites.My suggestion are always try to have privacy policy and term of service in you website.(i’m working on to implement it on my blog too).