Glossary

In order to use NetTracker, you will need to understand the definitions of the terms listed below:

Ad (Advertisement)

Also known as banner ads, ads are graphic images located on web pages that contain advertising copy inviting users to click on the ad to hyperlink to the advertiser's web site.

Browser

Also known as a web browser, a browser is defined as software that is used to view pages located on the Internet or an intranet. The two most popular web browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator (various versions).

Clickthrough

A clickthrough is defined as an event where a web site visitor clicks on an ad, thus exiting the web site to visit the web site that is hyperlinked to the ad.

Clickthrough Rate

The clickthrough rate is defined as the percentage of ad impressions (views) that the viewer actually clicked on (clickthroughs). (Clickthrough ÷ Impression) x 100 = Clickthrough Rate.

Department

A department is defined as a group of hosts or users that have been identified as belonging to the same group (such as the Finance Department on a corporate Intranet).

Domain

A domain is defined as a classification of a group of computers that are in some way related.

Each domain has a suffix that indicates to which top-level domain it belongs. There are only a limited number of top-level domains. Examples include: .com (commercial business), .edu (educational institutions), .net (network organizations), .org (organizations, non-profit), .gov (government agencies) and .mil (military).

Entry Page

An entry page is defined as the first page that a visitor viewed during a visit to a web site. Although the entry page is often the same as a web site's home page, in many cases visitors enter a web site on different pages due to different links from other web sites.

Exit Page

An exit page is defined as the last page that a visitor viewed before they exited a web site.

Error

Errors are defined as pages that visitors attempted to view, but received an error message instead. Often these errors occur because of broken links (links to pages that do not exist anymore) or when an unauthorized visitor attempts to access restricted pages (for example if the visitor does not have a password to access the page).

Error Hit

An error hit is defined as a hit to a web site that results in an error. An example of an error hit would be a hit to a page that resulted in an error message such as "file not found".

Hit

A hit is defined as a single file that is transferred to a web browser. Thus, a single HTML (HyperText Markup Language) document containing multiple inline images (.JPG, .GIF, etc.) would be counted as multiple hits to a web site. In addition, erroneous requests to transfer files are also counted as hits.

Host

A host is defined as a computer that is connected to the Internet and identifies an IP (Internet Protocol) address on the Internet. For example, the host www.sane.com represents the IP address 208.144.251.1

Keyword

A keyword is defined as a word or group of words that a user typed in a text box at a search engine or directory in order to search for web sites containing information related to these words.

Impression

An impression is defined as a view of an ad located on a web page.

Local Keyword

A local keyword is defined as a word or group of words that a user typed in a text box in a local search engine (on local web site, versus on a search engine such as Yahoo) to search for information on the web site related to these words.

Page

Also known as a web page, a page is defined as a single file on a web server. For example a page could be an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) document, an image, a Java™ applet, etc.

Path

A path is defined as the first two, three, four or five consecutive pages (defined by the user on the General Options screen) viewed by a web site visitor.

Platform

A platform is defined as a specific operating system (such as Windows 95, Macintosh, OS/2, etc.) used by a visitor to a web site.

Referrer

A referrer is defined as a page that directs visitors to another web page. Many times visitors are directed or referred to a page that is on an entirely different web site. This is the case when a user is referred to a web site from a search engine such as Yahoo. Sometimes users are referred to a page within the same web site by another page in the web site (such as the home page).

Robot/Spider

A robot or spider is a (non-human) agent that visits web sites in order to index the web sites in their search engine or directory.

Traversal

A traversal is defined as an individual journey by a web site visitor that follows a specific path.

Unique Errors

A unique error is defined as the total number of distinct errors encountered by all visitors to a web site.

User

A user is defined as a visitor to a web site that has gained access to the web site by entering a proper username and password.

View

A view is defined as a hit to a web page, excluding user defined files such as inline images (.JPG, .GIF, etc.), Java™ applets, etc.

Visit

A visit is defined as a series of consecutive views of a web site by the same user. If the user does not view a new web page in the specified period of time (the default is 30 minutes), the next page viewed by that user is considered the start of a new visit. Because the number of visits are calculated using complex algorithms, these figures are considered estimates.

Visit Duration

Visit duration is defined as the length of time a specific user spends on a web site during a visit. For analysis and for presentation purposes, Visit Durations are broken down into categories such as "Didn't Stay", "Less than 1 minute", "1 - 2 minutes", etc.