Live visitor tracking system and server side records' analysis: two sides of the coin

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When visitors arrive at your site, a Web server records their activity as they browse your site. This information can be extracted from log files and fed the log analysis software programs so they can generate readable reports.

In contrast to server-side tracking, HitLens is a live visitor tracking system. It gets information from visitor browsers by means of a piece of code inserted in the Web pages, so the visitor activity and transactions are tracked and reported in real time. The HitLens tracking code is a piece of JavaScript that allows you to measure and almost instantaneously report on site visitors.

A live visitor tracking system works in this way:

1. A visitor's browser accesses a Web page with the tracking script in it.
2. The browser reads the tracking JavaScript and follows its instructions.
3. A tracking server is triggered the moment the Web page is accessed by a visitor's browser (the server is the primary and temporary storage of the visitor’s data).
4. A tracking server transmits the visitor’s data to the Database server (Datacenter), where the data is then distributed, collected, processed, and permanently stored.
5. The end users requests HitLens reports from their computers from the Datacenter.

If you employ this visitor tracking technology, you need to place a small (invisible to visitors) JavaScript in every Web page so it is tracked. The tracking JavaScript tells the browser to request a 1x1 pixel image hosted on a Web CEO tracking server. Each time a Web page is viewed, the browser requests the image at a different URL. This prevents caching of the image—the browser needs to request the image when it loads a page, and as a result, data for each page is transferred to the tracking server. The tracking script also inserts a cookie file in your visitors' browsers, so the system will recognize visitors when they come back to the site. This is for tracking unique visitors.

HitLens backs up the cookie tracking technology by some other methods. In case the cookies are turned off in a visitor’s browser, such a visitor is tracked by a combination of IP address, user agent, language, and other browser settings.

This process takes much longer to read about than to happen in real life. Normally, it is only a few seconds (though it depends on many technical factors relating to the quality of the Internet connection) before the visitor tracking takes place, and the Web statistics become available for reporting.

Visitor browser vs. server log file: what info is more accurate?

This question is quite natural. Two different systems of visitor tracking and reporting co-exist in time and space, and both have ardent supporters and critics. The server log analysis is a reasonable choice if your site is very large, and you have a direct access to your server logs. However, if your primary task is to track human activity rather than monitor the technical side of your server performance, the live visitor tracking system will do the job more accurately and promptly.