“How many visitors do I have?” sounds like a simple question, but the answer depends on what you count. Enhance shows you server traffic: how many requests the website received, how many came from bots and how much data went out to visitors. That helps you spot peaks and load, but it isn't the number of people who read your website. For real visitors, you use an analytics tool installed on the website itself.
What you'll achieve
- know what the numbers in the Enhance traffic chart mean;
- find out where to get your real visitor count;
- know which logs exist on the server and which don't.
Before you start
- Log in to Enhance at https://server.nbt-host.com. We use the English names, exactly as they appear on screen.
- NBT Host plans have unlimited traffic: the chart is not a limit you can exceed.
The steps
1. The traffic chart in Enhance
In the traffic analytics section (“Analytics”), Enhance draws an hourly and daily chart of the requests your website receives. The numbers are:
| Metric | What it means |
|---|---|
| Total hits | all requests received by the server: every page, but also every image, CSS or JavaScript file on it |
| Unique hits | requests counted once per visitor, as the server tells visitors apart; closer to the number of visitors, but still not the same thing |
| Bot hits | requests identified as coming from bots: search engines, monitoring tools, scanners |
| Data sent and received | how much data went out to visitors and how much came in from them |
How to read it:
- a sudden jump in requests without a jump in sales or messages is usually a bot; if the website slows down at the same time, write to us;
- large amounts of data sent often come from unoptimized images or from large files that are downloaded often;
- a typical page makes dozens of requests (images, styles, scripts), so “Total hits” is always much higher than the number of visits.
2. Real visitors: an analytics tool on the website
For the number of people, where they come from and which pages they read, add an analytics tool to the website:
- Google Analytics: free, with a code snippet added to the website's pages (in WordPress, through a plugin, for example Site Kit by Google). In the European Union, the code only starts after the visitor consents in the cookie banner, so the numbers will be lower than the real traffic;
- Google Search Console: free, with no code on the website and no cookies. It shows how many times the website appeared in Google, how many clicks it got and for which searches. You verify the domain with a TXT record, from the DNS editor (see DNS zone editor: A, CNAME, MX and TXT);
- your store's statistics (in WooCommerce: orders, revenue) and your form statistics tell you more than any visit count.
3. Server logs
- You can read the PHP error log yourself: the website's “Developer tools” tab » the “PHP” card »
php-error.log(see Error 500 Internal Server Error and the blank page). - The access log (every request, with its IP address and time) is not kept for customers: Enhance uses it to build the traffic chart, then deletes it. If you need to find out what happened at a specific time (an attack, a submitted form), write to us as soon as possible, with the time and the page address.
- What changed in the account: on “Home”, under “Activity log”.
If something doesn't work
- The chart is empty. The website is new or the domain doesn't point to our server yet, so the requests go somewhere else (see How to point your domain to NBT Host).
- The numbers in Enhance and Google Analytics don't match. That's normal: Enhance counts requests, including bots and visitors who didn't accept cookies; Google Analytics counts only visits with consent.
- Lots of bots are loading the website. Send us the domain and the time range from the chart: we'll check where they come from.
- I can't find the chart. Search for “Analytics” in “Search”, the first item in the left-hand menu.