Website Traffic

Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. It is a large portion of Internet traffic. This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular. There are many ways to monitor the website traffic. Web traffic is measured to see the popularity of web sites and individual pages or sections within a site. Web traffic analysis provides;


•    The number of visitors
•    Average visit duration
•    Average page duration
•    Busy times
•    Most requested pages
•    Most requested entry pages etc.

The amount of traffic seen by a web site is a measure of its popularity. By analyzing the statistics of visitors it is possible to see shortcomings of the site and look to improve those areas. Web traffic can be increased by placement of a site in search engines and purchase of advertising, including bulk e-mail, pop-up ads, and in-page advertisements. Web traffic can also be increased by purchasing non-internet based advertising. If a web page is not listed in the first pages of any search, the odds of someone finding it diminishes greatly (especially if there is other competition on the first page). Very few people go past the first page, and the probability of subsequent pages is seen is substantially lower. Getting proper placement on search engines is as important as the web site itself.

Web traffic which comes from unpaid listing at search engines or directories is commonly known as "organic" traffic. Organic traffic can be generated or increased by including the web site in directories, search engines, guides (such as yellow pages and restaurant guides), and award sites. In most cases the best way to increase web traffic is to register it with the major search engines but just registering does not guarantee traffic, as search engines work by "crawling" registered web sites.

Usually, the top organic result gets most of the clicks from web users. According to some studies, the top result gets between 5% and 10% of the clicks. Each subsequent result gets between 30% and 60% of the clicks of the previous one. This indicates that it is important to appear in the top results. Because of the huge amount of information available on the web, crawlers might take days, weeks or months to complete review and index all the pages they find.