Home
Press material
CheckEffect Glossary
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M
N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | WXYZ
B
Browser
A program used for viewing HTML documents (e.g. Microsoft Internet Explorer, NetScape Navigator, Mosaic, Mozilla, Opera, Lynx, etc.). The menu point “Browser” provides information on the browser used by visitors (PC’s).
C
Cookies
Are small text files that are stored by the respective server on the PC of the visitor when visiting a website. Their purpose is to store information about the visitor or his/her input into a form. These text files can contain varied information about the surfing behaviour of the respective user.
Client
Clients are programs that programs that retrieve information from servers (e.g. search engines, web servers or database servers).
D
DNS
Abbreviation for “Domain Name Service”, “-Server” or “-System”. “Translate” domain names into IP addresses.
E
Entry pages
A listing of those pages most frequently accessed at the beginning of a user session.
Exit pages
Shows the number of pages most frequently viewed at the end of a user session.
F
Frames
Splitting up of websites into several HTML sections that are displayed by the browser at the same time.
I
IP address
Every computer that is connected to the Internet has an IP address. IP addresses are indicated as a series of numbers, namely in four blocks, the numbers of which lie between 0 and 255 (e.g. 216.239.57.100). The blocks of numbers are separated by a dot. This is also known as “dotted decimal notation”.
IP is the abbreviation for “Internet Protocol” and stands for the most important of all standard protocols that are used for the data transmission process through the Internet – computers can only communicate with each other in this way. The IP address is linked with this IP process. As the numerical address system is not generally easy to deal with for people, domain names, such as “Google.com” are used, as a rule. They are translated into the special numerical code by special servers (name servers, also called DNS).
Each IP address is unique. There are static IP addresses – these always remain the same, as well as dynamic IP’s that are allocated to a provider when dialling into the network from a contingency of available IP addresses. Dynamic allocation is, in the meantime, the norm.
P
Page impressions
Also called “page views”. Each individual loaded/accessed page is recorded as a “page impression”.
Plug-ins
Are service programs for servers or browsers in order to handle additional program functions. Frequently used plug-ins are add-ons for video sequences, animations, 3D objects or PDF files that the browser alone can not handle/display.
In “Plug-ins” the percentage of visitors (PC’s) is displayed that have a particular plug-in.
Providers
Are organisations that enable customers to access the Internet for a fee. Internet providers, such as EUnet, inode, or Aon, also offer hosting services, i.e. webspace on servers.
Online services such as AOL, Aon or T-Online make additional information available that is only accessible to members. These are also referred to as content providers.
R
Request
The enquiry of a client to a server. Thus, for example, the browser of a user sends a request to a server when accessing a website/clicking on a link. The server then checks its database to find out whether the requested file is available. If this is the case, it then sends a copy of the file back to the client as a response. Otherwise, an error code is provided, which invokes a respective error message by the browser (404 – Page not found, for example).
Referer
Through an error in the interface description of one of the first web servers, the word “Referrer” as written above became the norm for all browsers and web applications.
The referer is the URL of the website last accessed by the visitor.
Referer log data (protocol files) are suited to determining the “origin” of the website visitors.
Referring domains
Shows the number of domains for all referring sites (URL’s). This makes it apparent how many visitors from a particular domain reach your website.
Referring pages
Are those pages/URL’s from which visitors have reached your website (by clicking) during a defined time period.
Resolution
Displays the screen resolutions that were used by visitors (PC’s) for viewing the website in a defined time period.
Response
The response of the server to the request of a client.
S
Servers
Machines (computers) or programs that make information available. For example, web servers, FTP servers, or also database servers.
Programs that access information from servers become the client of the server, even if the clients may also have an independent server function. Search engine spiders, for example, are clients that access information from web servers in order to transmit it to their own servers for further processing.
Spiders
Are independent search engine programs that access pages from web servers continuously for “indexing”. In this way, search engines gather information about new websites/update already indexed websites in their search results.
U
User session
A session of activities that are carried out by a website visitor. There are 3 possibilities of clearly identifying an individual user:
- Visitors (PC’s) with cookie support can be clearly identified through the setting of so-called “session cookies". The user session ends when the browser is closed. If the browser is started again at a later point in time (and the respective website is visited again), a new user session starts.
- For visitors (PC’s) without cookie support, 2 hours without user activity is assessed to be the end of a user session. When activity is re-initiated, a new user session begins.
- Those visitors (PC’s) with only one page impression are assessed as a fully-fledged user session.
WXYZ
Webspace
Storage capacity on a computer (host) that is linked with the Internet. HTML files can be stored on this storage space which are then publicly viewable.