Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret data.

Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don't understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let's start by examining most basic data - average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

These figures are most accurate measure of your website's activity. It would appear on surface that more traffic you see recorded, better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge effectiveness of your site.

There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as "hits" and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site. Hits simply means number of information requests received by server. If you think about fact that a hit can simply equate to number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown concept of hits can be. For example, if your homepage has 15 graphics on it, server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. As you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffic.

The more visitors that come to your website, more accurate your interpretation will become. The greater traffic is to your website, more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smaller number of visitors, more a few anomalous visitors can distort analysis.

The aim is to use web traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site. If time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then challenge is to figure out what that problem is.

How Does Google AdSense Work? The concept is simple: The publisher or webmaster inserts a java script into a website. Each time page is accessed, java script pulls advertisements from Google's AdSense program. The ads are targeted and related to content contained on web page serving ad. If a web surfer clicks on an advertisement served from Google, webmaster serving ad earns a portion of money that advertiser is paying Google for click.

Google handles all tracking and payments, ultimately providing an easy way for webmasters to display content-sensitive, targeted ads, without headache of having to solicit advertisers, collect funds, monitor clicks or track statistics, any of which could easily become a full-time job.

While Google AdSense, like many pay-per-click programs, is plagued by claims of click-fraud, it is clearly an effective revenue source for many reputable web businesses. There seems to be no shortage of advertisers in AdWords program from which Google pulls AdSense ads. Webmasters seem less concerned by lack of information provided by Google and more interested in cashing their monthly checks from Google.

The Evolution of AdSense While Google's initial system was fairly rudimentary, only providing publishers option of displaying a handful of advertising formats, technology behind even first ads was anything but simplistic. The technology used to employ Google AdSense goes far beyond simple keyword or category matching. A complex algorithm is used to determine content contained on web page serving ad. Once content is assessed, and appropriate ads that contain related content are served.