Web analysis, also called web log analysis, is a way to find out how people in a certain group usually use the internet. It looks through the logs of popular servers, or "parses" them, to put the data into usable, readable forms. This must be done with computer software because the log is made up of code that an untrained human eye can't read. The code needs to be separated and turned into information that can be used. This is done by software called a "parser," which is usually made by another script called a "parser generator." There needs to be more than one parser because there are different ways that web logs can be put together.
So, what kind of information can you get from web analysis tools, and why is that information so important for success in the field of internet marketing? All of the information is given in terms of how many times sites on a certain server are involved in events. This would include the number of visitors, the number of unique visitors, the days of the week and times of day when those visits happened, the links that were visited from that page, the search engines that were used, and the keywords or phrases that were used to get to that site. As you can imagine, this is a very useful piece of information if you want to market to a certain group of people and you know their habits on a large scale. Internet marketing is a "science" because of these patterns.
Imagine for a moment that you want to start making money on the internet but you don't know where to start. I think you should start by doing some research, which is smart no matter what kind of business you want to start. In this case, the research would be done by a parser, which is a web analysis tool. Then you can find out things like the top 10 sales pages that were visited last month, last six months, last year, etc. With this information, you now have a good idea of what is selling well on the Internet. Now, you have to figure out how to sell it, right? Well, you can use the same tool to find out which pages were most often used to sell or buy the product you chose. You can also find out what words were used and which search engines put that site high on their lists.
As you can see, this is the foundation of everything in internet marketing. In this field, knowledge is power, and the way to get this power is through web analysis. There are many tools, and each has advantages and disadvantages. Try them out (many of them have trial periods), find the one you're most comfortable with, and start making money!
