How to check your website traffic in cPanel

  John Mwaniki /    Updated on 07 Jul 2024

In this article, I will take you through the process of checking your website traffic in your web hosting account cPanel.

What is Website Traffic?

Website traffic is the number of visitors coming to a website.

It has always been the goal of every website owner to have as many people as possible visiting their website. With huge traffic comes more brand awareness, business leads, and more sales.

With traffic being an important factor, it is therefore very important for any website owner to keep track and know exactly how many visitors their websites receive.

There are a number of ways that one can achieve this such as by integrating analytics applications such as Google Analytics on the website or by using the Awstats analytics application that comes packaged in cPanel for your hosting account.

In this article, we pay attention to doing it via the cPanel Awstats.

Awstats is an open-source Web analytics reporting tool, suitable for analyzing data from Internet services such as web, streaming media, mail, and FTP servers. AWStats parses and analyzes server log files, producing HTML reports.

How to check website traffic with Awstats in cPanel

Follow the step-by-step guide below:

Step 1: Log in to the cPanel

Step 2: Click on “Awstats” under the Metrics section.

Awstats in cpanel

Step 3: Select the domain name or subdomain in which you want to check traffic from the list and click “View” on its right.

Cpanel Awstats select domain

If you have an SSL certificate installed as in our example, you will see two options: The domain with SSL(HTTPS) and the one without(HTTP).

We have enforced redirecting all website visitors to the HTTPS version and so we don't expect to have a second one(without SSL). So we just click on "View" for the first option.

You will be redirected to a page that shows you different metrics for your website traffic as shown below.

Awstats important terminologies

Below are some of the most common Awstats terminologies you will come across when viewing various reports.

Unique Visitors

This is the unique number of visitors that have come to your website during the current period shown by the report. If this user makes several visits during this period, it is counted only once.

Visitors are tracked by IP address, so if multiple visitors use the same IP address to access the website, they will be counted as just one unique visitor.

Number of Visits

This is the total number of website visits made by all unique visitors.

Every time a person visits your website, it is counted as a visit. However, a visit can be compared to a session lasting for one hour. A single person can visit your website then end up navigating to 3 pages on your website. This will be counted as one visit but with 3 page views.

If a visitor spends more than one hour on the website, then it can be counted as several visits depending on the duration with each lasting for one hour.

Pages

The number of "pages" viewed by visitors. Pages are usually HTML, PHP, ASP, JSP, or Python files, not images or other files requested within the page(eg. js,css... files).

Hits

A total number of requests for resources(eg. pages, js, css, images, etc) from the server.

Bandwidth

The total amount of bandwidth consumed serving all of the website requests.

Awstats Reports

The Awstats statistics is divided into different reports such as summary, monthly history, days of the month, days of the week, hours, etc.

Summary

Awstats summary gives you a nice overview of all the important metrics within the specified duration.

Awstats statistiscs summary

The period shown by Awstats reports is by default the current month. You can show a different duration by selecting a different month or year in the "Reported period:", then click OK button.

Monthly History

This report allows you to track how your traffic is trending on a monthly basis.

Awstats statistics monthly history

Days of Month

This report lets you easily track your website traffic on a daily basis. With this, you will be able to know which days performed the best and the worst.

Awstats statistics days of month

Days of Week

This report shows your website traffic performance for different days of the week.

Awstats statistics days of week

Hours

This report gives you a nice view of which hours during the day your site gets the most hits.

Awstats statistics hours

Countries/Locales

This report lets you see what region of the world your visitors are coming from.

Hosts

This report shows the top IP addresses that have been visiting your website.

Robots / Spiders

This report shows the non-human visits from search engines and other automated sources.

Visits duration

This report shows the time your website visitors spend on your website per visit.

File Type

This report allows you to easily see what type of files are requested from the server most often.

Pages-URL

This report shows what pages are being requested/visited the most.

Operating-Systems

This report helps you know what operating systems your visitors are using when accessing your website.

Browsers

This report shows which web browsers your site is being viewed with.

HTTP status codes

This report lets you know which errors your website visitors are experiencing errors on your website.

Conclusion

Having a lot of traffic on the website is the goal of every website owner. With traffic being a very important factor for any website success, it is therefore very important for any website owner to keep track and know exactly how many visitors their websites receive.

In this article, you have learned how to check how much traffic your website receives for a specific duration through the open-source web analytics software, Awstats that comes packaged in web hosting cPanel.