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Log File Analysis Software

AWStats

AWStats is a free log file analysis package written in the Perl programming language and designed to be installed on a web server to enable reports to be viewed remotely via a browser. This is similar to the Webalizer statistics provided by hosting companies as part of the package. AWStats can also be run from a command prompt to analyse previously downloaded log files. The program can be obtained from the site: <http://awstats.sourceforge.net/awstats.ftp.html>. A recent version of the Perl language must also be installed on the machine. To run from the command line open the file called: awstats.model.conf and, as an absolute minimum, edit the variables LogFile and SiteDomain to give the location of the log file on local disk and the website name:

    LogFile="c:/Temp/mydomain.log"
    SiteDomain="www.mydomain.com"

There is a variable for converting IP addresses found in log files to Host names using the Domain Name Service but this makes file processing extremely slow for large log files. The analysis is run with the command:

awstats.pl -config=model -update

This performs an initial analysis and creates an AWStats file for each month in the log file. It takes around 5 minutes to process a 100Mbyte log file. Running the command:

awstats_buildstaticpages.pl -config=model -month=09

Will create a series of html files for the various statistics measured for a given month (09 = September). These can be viewed with a web browser. AWStats will run on any operating system that has Perl.  Analog <http://analog.cx/> is another free analysis tool with a popular following.

Mach5 Analyzer

Mach 5 Analyzer is a commercial package available with a limited free evaluation period from the site <http://www.mach5.com/>. It is a windows program and is simple to install. The program offers enhanced capabilities compared to the free packages including the ability to analyse the paths users take through a website. It also offers a lot of customised reporting options.  WebTrends <http://www.webtrends.com> is another popular log analysis and reporting tool.

SamSpade

If you need to get down to the nitty-gritty of individual log files SamSpade <http://www.samspade.org> is a useful site. For example you may notice a lot of traffic from a certain IP address. SamSpade can look up information about the address through the Domain Name System. This may be a new search engine robot, an email address harvester or someone who is page-jacking your entire website. You can block, either through the robots.txt file or using the .htaccess file on Apache web servers.

Conclusion

Your log files are often the first indicator of problems or success with your search engine optimization strategy. This requires analysing the results as an on-going task, noting any changes and establishing the causes. It can be as worthwhile concentrating effort on areas where you are not getting results as improving already popular areas or keywords. There are a lot of things that can be done to increase traffic to a website. Log files will show which techniques bring the most returns for a given effort.

See Also

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