WA Data Collection

Question 1

What are cookies?

Answer 1

Cookies are small text files used to store information
on user computers’ local hard drives. They fall into two
broad categories — transient and persistent.

Question 2

What are transient cookies?

Answer 2

A transient cookie is one that is created at the start of

every session, and deleted at the end of the session.

Question 3

What are persistent cookies?

Answer 3

A persistent cookie, on the other hand, outlasts the
user session. It is created when the user first enters
the server’s website, and is updated each time the
user re-enters the site using the same computer.

Question 4

What are the 4 most popular formats of log files?

Answer 4

1. NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications ) Common Log,
2. NCSA Combined Log,
3. NCSA Separate Log, and
4. W3C Extended Log.

Question 5

What does the NCSA common log format include?

Answer 5

NCSA Common Log format -

client IP address, 
client identifier, 
visitor username, 
date and time, 
HTTP request, 
status code for the request, and 
the number of bytes transferred during the request.

Question 6

What does the NCSA combined log format include?

Answer 6

Combined Log format -

the referring URL,
the visitor’s Web browser and operating system information, and
the cookie.

Question 7

What does the W3C extended log format include?

Answer 7

Separate Log format (or 3-Log format) -

contains the same information as the combined log - the access log, the referral log, and the agent log.
The date and time fields in each of the three logs are the same.

Question 8

What are the advantages of system log files?

Answer 8

using system log files does not require any changes to the Website or any extra software installation to create the log files.

because Web servers automatically create these logs and store them on a company’s own servers, the company has freedom to change their Web analytics tools and strategies at will. using system log files does not require any extra bandwidth when loading a page, and since everything is recorded server-side, it is possible to log both page request successes and failures.

Question 9

What are the disadvantages of system log files?

Answer 9

the collected data is limited to only transactions with the Web server. This means that they cannot log information independent from the servers, such as the physical location of the visitor. Similarly, while it is possible to log cookies, the server must be specifically configured to assign cookies to visitors in order to do so.

while it is useful to have all the information stored on a company’s own servers, the log file method is only available to those who own their Web servers.

Question 10

What is page tagging?

Answer 10

Through an invisible snippet of java code in a web page the “Javascript Tracker” tags a visitor with a cookie and sends data back to a central server.

According to Peterson the variables used and amount of data collected in page tagging are dependent on the Web analytics vendor.

Question 11

Why is javascript tagging not as accurate as we like?

Answer 11

Visitors that use browsers with Javascript disabled.

Visitors that Block/Delete Cookies.

Cookies that time-out.

Impatient visitors that click away before the tagged page loads completely.

Above mentioned bots of which the majority does not support Javascript.