| About the advantages: | | | | had to make do and live with the fact that the space |
| Did you know that you can go to your web sites' | | | | available to provide a computer with instructions was |
| server statistics pages to check on, among others,a) | | | | very limited. On the server side of things, it was easy |
| The number of visitors that came to your website?b) | | | | enough to install the statistics gathering software |
| The number of search engines that crawled your | | | | programs, but they were considered resources hogs. |
| pages?c) Keywords that people use search via | | | | To limit the amount of resources these programs |
| search engines to land on your web sites' pages?d) | | | | would use on a web server, someone had the bright |
| The countries these visitors came from?e) The | | | | idea to limit less essential software programs to |
| bandwidth that was used during a period of time? | | | | update only during low traffic periods. It was rapidly |
| Did you know that these server side statistics | | | | known by users that statistics became available |
| programs are usually provided at no cost whatsoever | | | | usually a day later. This set a precedent and created a |
| as an extra service to subscribing customers and that | | | | habit that still persists today. |
| most service providers provide more than one type of | | | | The fact is that computing power as enormously |
| statistics program? | | | | progressed and that waiting a whole day for stats to |
| My service provider, for instance, makes available | | | | appear as become completely redundant. Nowadays |
| three types of statistics gathering software programs | | | | servers are so powerful that they could provide you |
| which I can open and read via my user interface so | | | | with real-time data. |
| that I have three different sources I can | | | | You could for instance chose to install an application |
| cross-reference. | | | | that provides you with real-time useful feedback from |
| These statistics pages are of enormous importance to | | | | your web server. One such application is named |
| any website owners who wishes to keep track of a | | | | Keyword Catcher. This is a server side PHP script |
| number of parameters that can help them develop | | | | that will show you the queries that visitors typed into |
| their online business. Knowing which keyword their | | | | their browsers via Google, Yahoo, Bing or any other |
| visitors typed can be of paramount importance as this | | | | major search engine. The search engine results page |
| can help with finding inspiration for fresh content. | | | | produced a link to your website and the visitor clicked |
| About the disadvantages:a) The information statistics | | | | on it to land on one of your websites' pages. |
| results pages provide is not easy to read, it would | | | | Keyword Catcher will now be able to reproduce the |
| seem that these have been designed by and for | | | | exact same page that your visitor was presented by |
| engineers, so that it really takes some getting used | | | | the search engine. This allows you to see which page |
| to.b) Distilling useful information from statistics web | | | | rank your web page had at the time of the query. |
| pages can be a boring and time-consuming task.c) | | | | That in turn gives a website owner enormously useful |
| Exporting and filtering or discriminating results is often | | | | feedback on how the search engines perceive his |
| complicated or even not available.d) The results these | | | | web pages, allowing him to take corrective measures |
| servers collect are not always complete. Sometimes, | | | | or make use of opportunities. |
| a web server manager might decide that for certain | | | | As things stand today only a minority of people is |
| periods of time, for example, while some or other | | | | aware of the enormous potential of server side |
| update task is running, that the statistics software | | | | statistics or the inherent lucrative use this information |
| needs to be shut off. During this period the server is | | | | gathering can provide in terms of business intelligence. |
| not collecting any information and you will not even | | | | Only very large corporations have the budgets to |
| know about it.e) There is usually a 24 hour time lag | | | | develop and maintain the software needed to distil |
| between an event, such as a visit to a specific page, | | | | useful business intelligence. Keyword Catcher is a first |
| and a retrievable result. | | | | step in making available strategic information to |
| About the 24 hour time lag: | | | | website and small business owners who feel the need |
| This has a historic origin. In the early days, when | | | | to know more about people visiting their web sites' |
| random access memory (RAM) was extremely | | | | pages. |
| expensive and hard to come by, software engineers | | | | |