Traffic ReportsTraffic reports are information on the number of visits to a site or to specific documents on a site. The term can also be applied to the amount of correspondence forwarded by a mailing list.
Software programs scan server logs for information such as the number of distinct machines accessing the server or the most popular documents on the server. In many cases, comparative traffic reports may be more useful than raw figures by themselves. Comparative figures may accurately reflect the relative popularity of two sites, or the growth of a site. High traffic reports themselves may result from a newly added reference site, rather than new-found popularity. Traffic reports cannot evaluate the response to the site; high traffic reports may represent callers who mistakenly access and quickly reject the contents of the site.