One of the most useful elements of "web metrics" is the knowledge of what our visitors are looking at. UST uses WebTrends to track and analyze our web traffic.

Hey, who made you Big Brother?

Our web tracking gathers very little personal information about visitors to St. Thomas sites; our goal is not to spy on people. Instead, we learn which pages are popular, when traffic is heavy, and how people move from one portion of the site to another.  WebTrends focuses on trends, not individuals (hence the name).  As with any site on the internet, no information is personal or confidential, but we have no plans (or time) to track individual activity.

How can my department see WebTrends reports for our site?

Every site in Collage has an automatically-generated report available.  Additional data for early periods or other web sites might be available and we're happy to consult with you on request.  For more information, contact your Academic Technology Consultant or CORE-team member.

Why do some numbers not match other numbers?

As explained in a June 2008 post to the Metrics Insider blog, there are many reasons why one set of metrics might not match another set of similar (or even identical) metrics from a different measuring tool.  These issues range from untagged pages (something IRT can help you to fix) to cookie issues and ad-blocking software on the viewers' computers (something we have to live with).