Developing and testing methods to determine the use of web sites: case study newspapers

There is a general dearth of trustworthy information on who is using the web and how they use it. Such information is of vital concern to web managers and their advertisers yet the systems for delivering such data, where in place, generally cannot supply accurate enough data. Nor have web managers the expertise or time to evaluate the enormous amounts of information that are generated by web sites. The article, based on the experience of evaluating The Times web server access logs, describes the methodological problems that lie at the heart of web log analysis, evaluates a range of use measures (visits, page impressions, hits) and provides some advice on what analyses are worth conducting.