Economics Web Site Activity October-December 1999

Economics Web Site Activity
October to December 1999

October saw a growth in visitation of about 10%, rather remarkable given that an interruption of domain name service from October 27 to 30 prevented visitors from reaching us during that time. Commercial and educational domains were responsible for most of the increase.

November had two usage patterns to highlight. The site saw continued growth in use with overall activity increasing by one tenth over October's. The chief interruption in this growth was Thanksgiving, November the 25th. The bandwidth chart shows a major dip on this day, one of the most popular holidays of the United States for family gatherings, feasting and football.

December saw a continuation of the holiday doldrums. December visitation continued a slide seen in the latter half of November, with page views dropping about 3 percent and daily hits down 24%. On the other hand, visits to home and reports pages were largely unaffected, and the length of visits actually increased. Visits by the most common spiders doubled, accounting for more than 6% of total hits this month although there was little change in the top referring sites.

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General Statistics

The Visitor Profile by Regions graph identifies the general location of the visitors to your Web site. The General Statistics table includes statistics on the total activity for this web site during the designated time frame.

Statistics Report Range: 10/01/1999 00:00:00 - 01/01/2000 00:00:00

Hits Entire Site (Successful) 70,763

Average Per Day 769

Home Page N/A

Page Views Page Views (Impressions) 27,574

Average Per Day 299

Document Views 27,574

Visitor Sessions Visitor Sessions 14,402

Average Per Day 156

Average Visitor Session Length 00:09:37

International Visitor Sessions 12.3%

Visitor Sessions of Unknown Origin 22.51%

Visitor Sessions from United States 65.03%

Most Requested Pages

This section identifies the most popular web site pages and how often they were accessed. The average time a visitor spends viewing a page is also indicated in the table.

Most Requested Pages

Most Requested Pages

Pages Views % of Total Views Visitor Sessions Avg. Time Viewed

1 Forest Economics Research Work Unit, USDA-FS-SRS
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/ 1,527 5.53% 1,404 00:01:29

2 Forest Economics Research Work Unit, USDA-FS-SRS
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/econhome.htm 1,393 5.05% 1,316 00:01:25

3 Publications of the Forest Economics Research Work Unit, USDA-FS-SRS
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/research/reports.htm 1,171 4.24% 1,123 00:00:45

4 Study Descriptions
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/research/studies.htm 703 2.54% 673 00:01:30

5 Forest Economics Datasets and Tools, SRS4851
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/data/datatool.htm 603 2.18% 588 00:01:17

6 Research Mission, Economics Research Work Unit SRS4851, USDA Forest Service
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/mission.htm 522 1.89% 507 00:02:40

7 Downloadable Publications, Economics Unit, USDA-FS-SRS
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/research/online.htm 472 1.71% 451 00:04:29

8 Timber Mart South Area Conversion Weights for Timber and Log Prices
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/data/tmbrmart/ 415 1.5% 370 00:02:33

9 Search Here and Beyond, Forest Economics Unit, USDA-FS-SRS
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/search/ 400 1.45% 367 00:02:20

10 Sites Related to Forest Economics
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/othrpage.htm 350 1.26% 322 00:03:30

11 Personnel-Forest Economics Unit, USDA-FS-SRS
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/personel/personel.htm 293 1.06% 276 00:00:59

12 Effects of Hurricane Hugo on South Carolina timber prices
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/jpp983.htm 257 0.93% 248 00:03:30

13 Publication Abstracts, Economics Unit, USDA-FS-SRS
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/research/abstract.htm 251 0.91% 234 00:01:29

14 Table of Contents for Web Pages, USDA-FS-SRS
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/contents.htm 239 0.86% 233 00:01:34

15 (Abstract) The Impacts of NAFTA On U.S. And Canadian Forest Product Exports To M
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/jpp962.htm 222 0.8% 211 00:03:57

16 Recent Publications, FY93-98, SRS Forest Economics Unit
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/research/allrar.htm 218 0.79% 195 00:02:30

17 (Abstract) Contingent Valuation of Ecosystem Health
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/tpp961.htm 212 0.76% 206 00:03:11

18 Publications concerning Problem Area 1, RWU SRS4851
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/research/pa1.htm 202 0.73% 198 00:01:39

19 Forestry Sciences Lab., RTP, NC
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/lab/rtphome.htm 202 0.73% 198 00:01:51

20 Study Description: The Costs and Benefits of Low-Impact Logging Relative to Conv
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/research/std43_4.htm 178 0.64% 173 00:01:23

Subtotal For the Page Views Above 9,830 35.64% N/A N/A

Total For the Log File 27,574 100% N/A N/A

Top Entry Pages

This section identifies the first page viewed when a visitor visits this site. This is most likely your home page but, in some cases, it may also be specific URLs that visitors enter to access a particular page directly. The percentages refer to the total number of visitor sessions that started with a valid Document Type. If the session started on a document with a different type (such as a graphic or sound file), the file is not counted as an Entry Page, and the session is not counted in the total.

Top Entry Pages

File % of Total Visitor Sessions

1 Forest Economics Research Work Unit, USDA-FS-SRS
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/ 11.25% 1,318

2 Forest Economics Research Work Unit, USDA-FS-SRS
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/econhome.htm 7.39% 866

3 Publications of the Forest Economics Research Work Unit, USDA-FS-SRS
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/research/reports.htm 4.18% 490

4 Timber Mart South Area Conversion Weights for Timber and Log Prices
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/data/tmbrmart/ 2.15% 252

5 Effects of Hurricane Hugo on South Carolina timber prices
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/jpp983.htm 1.88% 221

6 (Abstract) The Impacts of NAFTA On U.S. And Canadian Forest Product Exports To M
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/jpp962.htm 1.45% 170

7 Study Descriptions
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/research/studies.htm 1.39% 163

8 (Abstract) Contingent Valuation of Ecosystem Health
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/tpp961.htm 1.37% 161

9 Research Mission, Economics Research Work Unit SRS4851, USDA Forest Service
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/mission.htm 1.2% 141

10 An examination of the relationships between hardwood lumber and stumpage prices
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/wgl981.htm 1.15% 135

11 Conjoint analysis: a preference-based approach for the accounting of multiple be
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/fcz971.htm 1.14% 134

12 Study Description: Accounting for Forest Resources in Gross Domestic Product and
http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/research/std42_4.htm 1.11% 131

Total For the Pages Above 35.69% 4,182

Most Downloaded Files

This section identifies the most popular file downloads for the site. If an error occurred during the transfer, that transfer is not counted.

Most Downloaded Files

File No. of Downloads % of Total Downloads Session Downloads

1 http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/scfer/scfer81.pdf 253 12.51% 60

2 http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/scfer/scfer83.pdf 200 9.89% 21

3 http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/scfer/scfer80.pdf 196 9.69% 85

4 http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/scfer/scfer82.pdf 179 8.85% 66

5 http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/misc/jpp962.pdf 179 8.85% 58

6 http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/misc/kjl971.pdf 146 7.22% 42

7 http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/fpei/fpei57.pdf 114 5.63% 44

8 http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/fpei/fpei59.pdf 103 5.09% 39

9 http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/misc/jde991.pdf 100 4.94% 40

10 http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/pubs/misc/tph971.pdf 77 3.8% 37

Total For the Files Above 1,547 76.5% N/A

Most Active Countries

This section identifies the top locations of the visitors to the site by country. The country of the visitor is determined by the suffix of their domain name. Use this information carefully because this information is based on where the domain name of the visitor is registered, and may not always be an accurate identifier of the actual geographic location of this visitor. For example, while a vast majority of .com domain names are from the United States, there is a small minority of domain names that exist outside of the United States.

Most Active Countries

Countries Visitor Sessions

1 United States 9,383

2 Canada 425

3 UK 296

4 AU 142

5 Japan 91

6 Germany 55

Total 10,520

Most Active Organizations

This section identifies the companies or organizations that accessed the site the most often.

Most Active Organizations

Organizations Hits % of Total Hits Visitor Sessions

1 aol.com 4,337 6.13% 3,031

2 fs.fed.us 2,984 4.22% 180

3 alltheweb.com 1,303 1.84% 99

4 uu.net 1,124 1.59% 150

5 alta-vista.net 604 0.85% 218

6 ncsu.edu 578 0.81% 54

7 inktomisearch.com 556 0.78% 527

8 bellsouth.net 527 0.74% 67

9 mindspring.com 524 0.74% 57

10 home.com 513 0.72% 98

11 infoseek.com 497 0.7% 30

12 googlebot.com 487 0.68% 57

13 216.233.51.147 422 0.59% 23

14 ja.net 410 0.58% 127

15 Stanford.EDU 383 0.54% 5

Subtotal For Companies Above 16,889 23.9% 5,330

Total For the Log File 70,763 100% 14,402

Organization Breakdown

This section provides a breakdown by types of organizations (.com, .net, .edu, .org, .mil, and .gov.) This information can only be displayed if reverse DNS lookups have been performed, and the percentages refer to the total of hits for which the organization type can be determined (some IPs cannot be resolved to a domain, and therefore an organization type cannot be determined).

Organization Breakdown

Organization Type Hits % of Total Hits Visitor Sessions

1 Company 17,404 42.39% 6,017

2 Network 11,626 28.31% 2,284

3 Education 9,307 22.67% 1,183

4 Government 1,342 3.26% 136

5 Organization 1,019 2.48% 117

6 Military 306 0.74% 37

7 Arpanet 50 0.12% 24

Total for Known Organization Types 41,054 100% 9,798

Summary of Activity for Report Period

This section outlines general server activity, comparing the level of activity on weekdays and weekends. The Average Number of Visitors and Hits on Weekdays are the averages for each individual week day. The Average Number of Visitors and Hits for Weekends groups Saturday and Sunday together. Values in the table do not include erred hits.

Summary of Activity for Report Period

Average Number of Visitors per day on Weekdays 167

Average Number of Hits per day on Weekdays 883

Average Number of Visitors for the entire Weekend 260

Average Number of Hits for the entire Weekend 958

Most Active Day of the Week Tue

Least Active Day of the Week Sat

Most Active Day Ever December 03, 1999

Number of Hits on Most Active Day 1,493

Least Active Day Ever December 31, 1999

Number of Hits on Least Active Day 1

Most Active Hour of the Day 09:00-09:59

Least Active Hour of the Day 22:00-22:59

Summary of Activity by Time Increment

This section helps you understand the bandwidth requirements of the site by indicating the volume of activity in kilobytes transferred. The table provides various measures of activity by unit of time for the report period (the unit of time depends on the amount of time covered by the report, and will be the day in most cases).

Activity by Time Increment (Bandwidth)

Number of Views per Visitor Session

This section shows the number and percentages of visits and page views versus the number of pages viewed.

Number of Pages Viewed per Visit

Number of Pages Viewed Number of Visits % of Total Visits

1 page 7,953 68%

2 pages 1,614 13.8%

3 pages 759 6.49%

4 pages 381 3.25%

5 pages 223 1.9%

6 pages 161 1.37%

7 pages 114 0.97%

8 pages 85 0.72%

9 pages 54 0.46%

10 pages 62 0.53%

11 pages 38 0.32%

12 or more pages 250 0.17%

Totals 11,694 100%

Top Referring Sites

This section identifies the domain names or numeric IP addresses with links to the site. This information will only be displayed if your server is logging this information.

Top Referring Sites

Site Visitor Sessions

1 http://www.rtp.srs.fs.fed.us/ 4,020

2 No Referrer 3,604

3 http://infoseek.go.com/ 953

4 http://www.altavista.com/ 632

5 http://ink.yahoo.com/ 557

6 http://63.224.143.20/ 323

7 http://search.aol.com/ 269

8 http://www.lycos.com/ 249

9 http://aolsearch.aol.com/ 231

10 http://search.yahoo.com/ 229

Subtotal for the Referring Sites Above 11,067

Total for the Log File 11,067

Top Search Engines

The graphic illustrates the first-time visitor sessions initiated by searches from each search engine. The first table identifies which search engines referred visitors to the site the most often. Note that each search may contain several keywords. The second table identifies the main keywords for each search engine.

Top Search Engines

Engines Searches % of Total

1 InfoSeek 1,060 23.12%

2 Yahoo 931 20.3%

3 AltaVista 766 16.71%

4 Lycos 314 6.84%

5 Google 309 6.74%

6 GoTo 180 3.92%

7 AOL NetFind 159 3.46%

8 dogpile 147 3.2%

9 HotBot 143 3.11%

10 Go2Net 129 2.81%

11 Look Smart 94 2.05%

12 CNET 82 1.78%

13 Snap 65 1.41%

14 Microsoft Network 64 1.39%

15 Excite 45 0.98%

16 WebCrawler 34 0.74%

17 All The Web 32 0.69%

18 Savvy Search 13 0.28%

19 DirectHit 12 0.26%

20 Northern Light 4 0.08%

Total of Searches for the Engines Above 4,583 99.97%

Total of Searches for the Log File 4,584 100%

Top Search Phrases

The first table identifies Phrases which led the most visitors to the site (regardless of the search engine). The second table identifies, for each phrase, which search engines led visitors to the site.

Top Search Phrases

Phrases Phrases found % of Total

1 hurricane hugo 139 3.03%

2 conjoint analysis 104 2.26%

3 forest management 72 1.57%

4 contingent valuation 59 1.28%

5 timber prices 57 1.24%

6 timber mart south 54 1.17%

7 market failure 50 1.09%

8 forest economics 41 0.89%

9 gross domestic product 40 0.87%

10 agroforestry 39 0.85%

11 tropical rain forests 35 0.76%

12 forest fragmentation 30 0.65%

13 carbon sequestration 30 0.65%

14 forestry economics 27 0.58%

15 ecosystem health 26 0.56%

16 capm 25 0.54%

17 loblolly pine 24 0.52%

18 soil conservation 22 0.47%

19 habitat fragmentation 22 0.47%

20 lumber prices 22 0.47%

Total Found for the Phrases Above 918 20.02%

Total of Phrases Found in the Log File 4,584 100%

Glossary

Glossary

Ad Clicks A click on an advertisement on a web site which takes a visitor to another site, it is referred to as an ad click.

Ad Views A web page that presents an ad. Once the visitor has viewed an ad, he/she can click on it (see Ad Click). There may be more than one ad on an ad view.

Authentication Technique by which access to Internet or Intranet resources requires the visitor to identify himself or herself by entering a username and password.

Bandwidth Measure (in kilobytes of data transferred) of the traffic on the site.

Browser A program used to locate and view HTML documents (Netscape, Mosaic, Microsoft Explorer, for example.)

Click through rate Percentage of visitors who click on a viewed advertisement. This is a good indication of the effectiveness of this ad.

Client The browser (see above) used by a visitor to a Web site.

Client Errors An error occurring due to an invalid request by the visitor's browser. Client errors are in the 400-range. See "Return Code" definition.

Company Database The database installed and used by WebTrends to look up the company name, city, state and country corresponding to a specific domain name.

Cookies Persistent Client-State HTTP Cookies are files containing information about visitors to a web site (e.g., user name and preferences). This information is provided by the visitor during the first visit to a Web server. The server records this information in a text file and stores this file on the visitor's hard drive. When the visitor accesses the same web site again, the server looks for the cookie and configures itself based on the information provided.

Domain Name The text name corresponding to the numeric IP address of a computer on the Internet (i.e., www.webtrends.com).

Domain Name Lookup The process of converting a numeric IP address into a text name (for example, 204.245.240.194 is converted to www.webtrends.com).

FTP File Transfer Protocol is a standard method of sending files between computers over the Internet.

Filters A means of narrowing the scope of a report or view by specifying ranges or types of data to include in or exclude.

Forms An HTML page which passes variables back to the server. These pages are used to gather information from visitors. Also referred to as scripts.

GIF Graphics Interchange Format is an image file format commonly used in HTML documents.

HTML Hyper Text Markup Language is used to write documents for the World Wide Web to specify hypertext links between related objects and documents.

HTTP Hyper Text Transfer Protocol is a standard method of transferring data between a Web server and a Web browser.

Hit An action on the Web site, such as when a visitor views a page or downloads a file.

Home Page The main page of a Web site. The home page provides visitors with an overview and links to the rest of the site. It often contains or links to a Table of contents for the site.

Home Page URL The local path or Internet URL to the default page of the Web site for which WebTrends reports will be generated.

IP Address Internet Protocol address identifying a computer connected to the Internet.

JPEG Joint Photographic Expert Group - Compressed graphic format common on the Internet.

Log File A file created by a web or proxy server which contains all of the access information regarding the activity on that server.

Page Views Also called Page Impressions. Hit to HTML pages only (access to non-HTML documents are not counted).

Platform The operating system (i.e. Windows 95, Windows NT, etc.) used by a visitor to the site.

Protocol An established method of exchanging data over the Internet.

Referrer URL of an HTML page that refers to the site.

Return Code The return status of the request which specifies whether the transfer was successful and why.
Possible "Success" codes are:
200 = Success: OK
201 = Success: Created
202 = Success: Accepted
203 = Success: Partial Information
204 = Success: No Response
300 = Success: Redirected
301 = Success: Moved
302 = Success: Found
303 = Success: New Method
304 = Success: Not Modified
Possible "Failed" codes are:
400 = Failed: Bad Request
401 = Failed: Unauthorized
402 = Failed: Payment Required
403 = Failed: Forbidden
404 = Failed: Not Found
500 = Failed: Internal Error
501 = Failed: Not Implemented
502 = Failed: Overloaded Temporarily
503 = Failed: Gateway Timeout

Server A computer that hosts information available to anyone accessing the Internet.

Server Error An error occurring at the server. Web server errors have codes in the 500 range.

Spiders An automated program which searches the internet.

Suffix (Domain Name) The three digit suffix of a domain can be used to identify the type of organization.
Possible "Suffixes" are:
.com = Commercial
.edu = Educational
.int = International
.gov = Government
.mil = Military
.net = Network
.org = Organization

URL Uniform Resource Locator is a means of identifying an exact location on the Internet. For example, http://www.webtrends.com/html/info/default.htm is the URL which defines the use of HTTP to access the Web page Default.htm in the /html/info/ directory on the WebTrends Corporation Web site). As the previous example shows, a URL is comprised of four parts: Protocol Type (HTTP), Machine Name (webtrends.com), Directory Path (/html/info/), and File Name (default.htm).

User Agent Fields in an extended Web server log file identifying the browser and platform used by a visitor.

Visit Commonly called Visitor Session. All activity for one visitor of a web site. By default, a visitor session is terminated when a visitor is inactive for more than 30 minutes.

Visitor Session A session of activity (all hits) for one visitor of a web site. A unique visitor is determined by the IP address or cookie. By default, a visitor session is terminated when a visitor is inactive for more than 30 minutes. This duration can be changed from General panel in the Options, Web Traffic Analysis dialog. Synonym: Visit.

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