Web statistics have been a bone of contention for some considerable time. Part of the reason for this is that the analysis of the statistics now serves a quite different range of functions from those originally envisaged. What is Web Traffic? The logging of information about visitors to Websites began as a simple extension of the information kept by server administrators long before the Web came into being. In those days the information about files served, peak times for traffic., etc were

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... cted in order to provide detail about the level of service. This could be used by the system administrator to anticipate necessary upgrades to the service, to spot bottlenecks in processing, identify unauthorised use of the facilities, etc. Analysis of this data could be presented in simple graphical form to the managers of the service in hourly, daily, or weekly breakdowns, illustrating aspects of usage. 1 Then the Web arrived. At first there wasn't a problem, since most early sites were academic-related, and inline images were not an option. A hit to a page was exactly that, and the statistics told you pretty much what you wanted to know. Was anyone looking at your page? Which domains did they arrive from? Which is the busiest or quietest time? Are users attempting to find pages which have since been moved? Etc. Once inline graphics became possible in mid '93, statistics for the Web became a more complicated issue: a hit to a page with ten or so inline graphics (graphical bullet points, section dividers, headings, banners, etc) would result in ten further requests. In other words the statistics began to reflect the complexity of documents served rather than the usage of files. It was still possible to work out what was going on, but no longer straightforward.