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Web traffic is the data sent and received by visitors to a
website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and W ...
. Since the mid-1990s, web traffic has been the largest portion of
Internet traffic Internet traffic is the flow of data within the entire Internet, or in certain network links of its constituent networks. Common traffic measurements are total volume, in units of multiples of the byte, or as transmission rates in bytes per cert ...
. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country. There are many ways to monitor this traffic, and the gathered data is used to help structure sites, highlight security problems or indicate a potential lack of
bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...
. Not all web traffic is welcomed. Some companies offer
advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...
schemes that, in return for increased web traffic (visitors), pay for screen space on the site. Sites also often aim to increase their web traffic through inclusion on
search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
s and through
search engine optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or "organic" results) rather than dire ...
.


Analysis

Web analytics is the measurement of the behavior of visitors to a website. In a commercial context, it especially refers to the measurement of which aspects of the website work towards the business objectives of
Internet marketing The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
initiatives; for example, which landing pages encourage people to make a purchase.


Control

The amount of traffic seen by a website 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. It is also possible to increase the popularity of a site and the number of people that visit it.


Limiting access

It is sometimes important to protect some parts of a site by password, allowing only authorized people to visit particular sections or pages. Some site administrators have chosen to block their page to specific traffic, such as by geographic location. The re-election campaign site for
U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university * President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
George W. Bush
GeorgeWBush.com
was blocked to all
internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
users outside of the U.S. on 25 October 2004 after a reported attack on the site. It is also possible to limit access to a web server both based on the number of connections and the bandwidth expended by each connection.


Sources


From search engines

The majority of website traffic is driven by
search engines A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in ...
. Millions of people use search engines every day to research various topics, buy products, and go about their daily surfing activities. Search engines use keywords to help users find relevant information, and each of the major search engines has developed a unique
algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...
to determine where websites are placed within the search results. When a user clicks on one of the listings in the search results, they are directed to the corresponding website and data is transferred from the website's server, thus counting the visitors towards the overall flow of traffic to that website.
Search engine optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or "organic" results) rather than dire ...
(SEO), is the ongoing practice of optimizing a website to help improve its rankings in the search engines. Several internal and external factors are involved which can help improve a site's listing within the search engines. The higher a site ranks within the search engines for a particular keyword, the more traffic it will receive.


Increasing traffic

Web traffic can be increased by the placement of a site in search engines and the purchase of
advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...
, including bulk e-mail, pop-up ads, and in-page advertisements. Web traffic can also be purchased through web traffic providers that can deliver targeted traffic. Web traffic can be increased not only by attracting more visitors to a site, but also by encouraging individual visitors to "linger" on the site, viewing many pages in a visit. (''see
Outbrain Outbrain is a web recommendation platform founded in 2006 by Co-Founder and Co-CEO Yaron Galai and Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer and General Manager, Ori Lahav. The company is headquartered in New York City. The company generates revenue f ...
for an example of this practice'') 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 percentage that go to subsequent pages is substantially lower. Consequently, getting proper placement on search engines, a practice known as SEO, is as important as the website itself.


Traffic overload

Too much web traffic can dramatically slow down or prevent all access to a website. This is caused by more file requests going to the server than it can handle and may be an intentional attack on the site or simply caused by over-popularity. Large-scale websites with numerous servers can often cope with the traffic required, and it is more likely that smaller services are affected by traffic overload. Sudden traffic load may also hang your server or may result in a shutdown of your services.


Denial of service attacks

Denial-of-service attack In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host conne ...
s (DoS attacks) have forced websites to close after a malicious attack, flooding the site with more requests than it could cope with.
Viruses A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's ...
have also been used to coordinate large-scale distributed denial-of-service attacks.


Sudden popularity

A sudden burst of publicity may accidentally cause a web traffic overload. A news item in the
media Media may refer to: Communication * Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass e ...
, a quickly propagating email, or a link from a popular site may cause such a boost in visitors (sometimes called a flash crowd or the Slashdot effect).


Fake traffic

Interactive Advertising Bureau The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is an American advertising business organization that develops industry standards, conducts research, and provides legal support for the online advertising industry. The organization represents many of th ...
estimated in 2014 that around one third of Web traffic is generated by
Internet bot An Internet bot, web robot, robot or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) over the Internet, usually with the intent to imitate human activity on the Internet, such as messaging, on a large scale. An Internet b ...
s and
malware Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, depr ...
.


Traffic encryption

According to
Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, ...
since January 2017, more than half of the Web traffic is
encrypted In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can deci ...
with
HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is used for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protocol is enc ...
. Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is the secure version of
HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...
, and it secures information and data transfer between a user's browser and a website.


See also

* Data mining *
Hit (Internet) In web analytics and website management, a pageview or page view, abbreviated in business to PV and occasionally called page impression, is a request to load a single HTML file ( web page) of an Internet site. On the World Wide Web, a page reques ...
*
Internet traffic Internet traffic is the flow of data within the entire Internet, or in certain network links of its constituent networks. Common traffic measurements are total volume, in units of multiples of the byte, or as transmission rates in bytes per cert ...
*
Page view In web analytics and website management, a pageview or page view, abbreviated in business to PV and occasionally called page impression, is a request to load a single HTML file ( web page) of an Internet site. On the World Wide Web, a page request ...
*
Unique user Website popularity is commonly determined using the number of unique users, and the metric is often quoted to potential advertisers or investors. A website's number of unique users is usually measured over a standard period of time, typically a m ...
* Web traffic generation model


References


Bibliography

*Machlis, Sharon (17 June 2002)
"Measuring Web Site Traffic"
at ComputerWorld.com – retrieved 1 January 2005 *Matt Johnson (5 May 2011).
BBC News
look at the case of
freelance ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance ...
journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
Glenn Fleishman after his site was linked to from
MacCentral MacCentral was a web site that provided news and information covering the Apple Macintosh, originally as an independent entity and later as the news service for Mac Publishing Web sites, including Macworld.com and Playlist, before being subsumed by ...
 – retrieved 7 July 2005 {{DEFAULTSORT:Web Traffic Computer network analysis Web analytics Digital marketing