 |
 |
|
| HOME MEET THE STAFF CONTACT US RATE HOTELS PRICING PRESS & MEDIA SITE MAP SUPPORT DESK |
Google/Urchin UTM Reporting June 4, 2007 Accurately View Your Site's Online Traffic with HotelTravelCheck.com's Urchin Traffic Monitor HotelTravelCheck.com has always been the leader in the industry offering the highest in quality services and now we are pleased to be able and offer the Urchin Traffic Monitor which results in the highest website traffic accuracy for you and your business. For businesses looking to get a clear picture of their visitor traffic and behavior, the UTM System is an extremely valuable technology that combines the best of client and server side information. It is the most advanced technology for website statistic in the field and only HotelTravelCheck.com is utilizing this technology along with their superior skills to help you succeed in the hospitality industry. In standard attempts to identify and track unique visitors and sessions, we are basically going against the nature of the web. Particularly troublesome to tracking visitors are the increasingly common proxying and caching techniques used by service providers and the browsers, themselves. Proxying hides the actual IP address of the visitor and can use one IP address to represent more than one web user. A users IP address can change between sessions. Thus, it is possible that one visitor will have different IP addresses for each hit and/or different IP addresses between sessions. The result is an inaccurate reporting of visitors to your site. Caching of pages can also cause your reports to be inaccurate as large providers look to decrease the load on their network by caching or remembering commonly viewed pages and images. For example, if thousands of users from a particular provider are viewing the CNN website, the provider may benefit from caching the static pages and images of the website and delivering those pieces to the users from within the provider's network. This has the effect of pages being delivered without the knowledge of the actual website. The UTM system was specifically designed to negate the effects of caching and proxying and allow the server to see every unique click from every visitor without significantly increasing the load on the server. In addition, the UTM system tracks visitors between sessions so that an analysis of unique visitor behavior and repeat visit patterns enables you to understand the frequency and nature of your online visitors. What does this mean for you as a client already receiving reports? You will actually see a decline in the number of visitors and stats on the UTM report. Why? The UTM system will not pick up duplicate visitors on the same visit or fake IP addresses. It will give the MOST accurate report available today on the web. The new system will provide you a better understanding of what your website is doing for you and what your visitors are searching for enabling you to better utilize the web and serve your customers needs. UTM vs. Standard Session Tracking When initially setting up a site for Urchin statistics, you have a choice on the method you wish Urchin to use when tracking visitors. With standard session tracking, Urchin uses the visitor's IP address, browser and platform (e.g. Windows 2000/Internet Explorer 6.0), and a 30 minute session timeout. Standard session tracking requires no site modifications and is available for all domains. However, it is not as accurate as UTM tracking and will include robot traffic in session analysis. UTM (Urchin Traffic Monitor) tracking utilizes javascript and cookies to track visitors. It is the most accurate tracking method and will also filter out robot traffic from session analysis. UTM also enables additional reporting on unique visitors and sessions plus visitor screen resolutions, colors, language, and more. UTM tracking does require us to modify all pages on your site and is only available for sites hosted by HotelTravelCheck.com. |