The Kearneysville Tree Fruit Web Site: 1998 Site and User Statistics Summary

Alan R. Biggs
West Virginia University
Kearneysville Tree Fruit Research and Education Center
P.O. Box 609
Kearneysville, WV 25443

Introduction:  The Kearneysville Tree Fruit Web Site has been online since November, 1996. At this time last year, we presented a summary of web site changes and activity for the first year of activity (Biggs, 1997). The 1997 summary relied upon statistics gained from simple Unix log queries and page counters. With the sophisticated Web site analysis software programs that are now available, more in-depth analyses than those conducted last year are possible. The objectives of this report are to summarize 1998 Web site activity and present preliminary data on site users.

Methods: Data on web site usage were collected from three sources. Web site analysis was conducted partially from data collected by the independent online statistics services FreeStats (http://www.freestats.com) and WebTracker (http://www.FXWeb.com). Data collected from these services were used to determine browsers used to access the site, operating system of users, return visitor percentages, and site link analyses. In addition, WebTrends (http://www.webtrends.com) software was used to determine general statistics, user profiles by regions, most requested pages, most downloaded files, most active organizations, most active countries, activity level by day of week and time of day, most downloaded file types, domain percentages, visits by North American states and provinces, most active cities, and bandwidth. Data are presented for defined sample periods encompassing 3 to 12 months of activity. A glossary of terms is available in Table 1.

General Site Statistics: For the period 1 November, 1997, through 29 October, 1998, the Kearneysville web site had 47,359 user sessions and served 117,998 page views, with averages of 330 page views/day, and 132 user sessions/day (Table 2). Each user session averaged 10 minutes and 8 seconds. Log analyses of total bytes served (bandwidth) showed that use of the Web site was more than doubled in 1998 relative to 1997. Bandwidth was fairly consistent over the most recent 6-month period from 7 May through 7 October, with a mean of approximately 18 megabytes transferred/day, and site visits averaged 152 user sessions/day during this time.

Top entry pages and paths through the site: The Home Page (http://www.caf.wvu.edu/kearneysville/wvufarm1.html) was the top entry page for the Web Site, with approximately 25% of user sessions beginning here. Other top entry pages included the Mid-Atlantic Regional Fruit Loop (5.3%), Index of Photographs, Biology and Monitoring Information for Tree Fruit Diseases (4.8%), Key to Major Diseases of the Mid-Atlantic Region (4.2%), Disease Management Guide for Organic Apple Production (3.0%), and Index to Tree Fruit Insect Pest Photographs (2.4%). These pages, and many others, were entry pages because individuals, organizations and web sites have constructed bookmarks and links directly to these pages. Also, search engines can index all the pages at a web site and, depending on the search criteria, will return links to pages within the site.

Most frequently requested pages: For the period 11 October, 1997, through 10 October, 1998, the most frequently visited page (and total number of user sessions) was the Home Page (13,141), followed by Index of Photographs, Biology, Monitoring, and Management Information for Tree Fruit Diseases (4,419), Mid-Atlantic Regional Fruit Loop (3,604), Key to Major Diseases of the Mid-Atlantic Region (2,800), Index of Photographs, Biology, and Monitoring Information for Tree Fruit Insects (2,210), Visual Gallery of Tree Fruit Disease Images (2,180), Publications (1,755), Plant Pathology Program (1,671), Links (1,602), OSU Organic Apple Disease Management Guide (1,555), Fruit Disease and Insect Focus Articles (1,499), the Search Utility (1,495), and Current Conditions (1,367) (Table 3). The order of most frequently visited pages varied slightly by month. For example, in April, 1998, during the apple bloom period, the third-ranking page was Current Conditions (262 user sessions). The Winchester Maryblyt update ranked 6^th, with 156 user sessions during April, 1998.

The top 50 pages for the year are listed in Table 3.  This expanded list is helpful to determine the use of pages that have internal links, such as the Index of Fruit Disease Photographs, Visual Gallery of Fruit Disease Images, and the Spray Guide. The most frequently requested disease fact sheets were Fire Blight (1,205), Apple Scab (1,117), Cedar-apple Rust (872), Brown Rot (754), Peach Leaf Curl (673), Apple Powdery Mildew (602), Quince Rust (584), Apple Black Rot (509), Bacterial Canker of Sweet Cherry (485), and Plum Black Knot (441) (numbers are user sessions). The most frequently visited links from the Gallery of Disease Images were for apple fruit diseases (827), apple foliage diseases (625), cherry diseases (266, past 6 months only), and peach fruit diseases (249, past 6 months only).

Most downloaded files: Only two files in PDF format are available at the Kearneysville Web Site, although more are planned. From 11 October, 1997, through 10 October, 1998, The Virginia Home Orchard Management Guide was downloaded 2,074 times. A Plant Disease Feature Article on the use of the World Wide Web in extension plant pathology was downloaded 129 times from 27 April through 10 October (Biggs and Grove, 1998 (pdf download 1.6 Mb file)).

Most active organizations: America Online (aol.com) was the most active organization with 3,958 user sessions during the past 6 months (7 May - 7 October). Digital Equipment Corp. (dec.net) ranked second in user sessions with 1,138, and The West Virginia Network for Educational Telecomputing (WVNET) was third with 1,127 user sessions. The fourth most active organization was Uunet Technologies, Inc. (uu.net) with 431 user sessions. Other active organizations included West Virginia University (wvu.edu), Virginia Tech (vt.edu), AT&T Easylink Services (att.net), Erols (erols.com), Splitrock Internet Services (splitrock.net), Information Avenue Internet Services (infoave.net), Netcom Online Services (netcom.com), IBM Corporation (ibm.net), Televar Northwest (televar.com), Washington State University (wsu.edu), Cornell University Network Resources (cornell.edu), University of Minnesota (umn.edu), University of Maryland (umd.edu), and Michigan State University (msu.edu).

Seven different types of organizations, based on the domain name suffix, visited the web site. Organizations designated as companies (.com) had the most user sessions (38.7%), followed by network sites (.net) (32.7%), educational institutions (.edu) (25.1%), organizations (.org) ( 1.4%), government (.gov) (1.4%), military (.mil) (0.6%), and arpanet (.arp) (0.1%).

Most active countries: The Kearneysville Tree Fruit Web Site was visited by individuals from 96 countries during the period from 11 October, 1997, through 10 October, 1998 (Table 4). Sixty-nine percent of visitors were from the United States, 15% were international, and 16% could not be determined. During the most recent 6 months, the countries most frequently visiting, after the U.S., with 16,374 user sessions, were Canada (1,070), Australia (357), UK (214), Germany (193), Italy (128), and Spain (111).

Most active North American states and provinces: The Kearneysville web site was visited by individuals from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 9 Canadian provinces (Table 5). The most user sessions originated from Virginia (35.4%), California (18.8%), and West Virginia (9.5%). Other top ranking states included, in descending order, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, New Jersey, and Michigan (Table 5). Most active states and provinces are determined by where the domain name of the visitor is registered, and may not always be an accurate representation of the geographic location of the visitor.

Most active cities: The most active city was Vienna, Va., followed by Palo Alto, Ca., Morgantown, W.Va., Falls Church, Va., Mountain View, Ca., Columbus, Oh., Pittsburgh, Pa., Portland, Ore., Blacksburg, Va., and Lincroft, N.J. As with states and provinces, most active cities is determined by where the domain name of the visitor is registered, and may not always be an accurate representation of the geographic location of the visitor.

Most common computer operating systems and web browsers: Most computer users are relying on Windows95 (75%) (Table 6). Other operating systems include Windows 3.1 (8%), Macintosh (8%), Windows NT (5%), Windows98 (3%), and WebTV (1%). Several other systems were noted but accounted individually for less than 1% of visits. The most commonly used Internet browsers were Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 (27%), Netscape Navigator 4 (26%), Internet Explorer 3 (23%), and Netscape Navigator 3 (20%) (Table 7).

Most active links to the web site: This information was gathered from the FreeStats service during the period January through April, 1998, and pertains only home page accesses. It is useful because it tells the web site developer where the visitors were before they came to the site. With this information, the site author can more effectively determine the audience and establish contacts with Web site authors with similar interests. The home page was most commonly accessed directly by home page URL type-ins, bookmarks, or from mailboxes. Other common accesses to the home page included, in descending order, The Mid-Atlantic Regional Fruit Loop; Mike's Fruit of the Day; Looksmart; WVU university, college, and extension pages; Washington State University fruit pathology page; Radcliff's IPM Textbook; NE-IPM page; Scaffolds Fruit Newsletter; The Backyard Fruit Grower; The Gardening Launch Pad; The Virtual Orchard; various links at Penn State; and Neva's Fruit Page. The Kearneysville Tree Fruit Web site is linked at over 100 different Internet locations throughout the world, based on the results of an Infoseek URL search.

Conclusions: Use of the web site has grown in 1998, approximately double that in 1997. The web site is being used by commercial orchardists locally and nationally, professional orchard consultants, university fruit extension specialists and research and teaching faculty, regional and county agricultural extension agents, master gardeners, and home orchardists. The web site is being used for university teaching at the associate, undergraduate, and graduate levels. The web site is being used predominantly in the mid-Atlantic region, but also in other agricultural areas of the country, as well as internationally.

Acknowledgement of 1998 contributors to the Kearneysville Tree Fruit Web Site: Entomology material prepared by H. W. Hogmire, plant nutrition material prepared by S. S. Miller, plant pathology material provided by A. R. Biggs, A. L. Jones, P. W. Steiner, T. B. Sutton, W. F. Wilcox, and K. S. Yoder. Original content in plant pathology was based on the Mid-Atlantic Orchard Monitoring Guide, NRAES, 1995. The disease key was based on that published by Schwarz and Burr, 1984, and revised to include major diseases of the mid-Atlantic region. Most of the original Monitoring Guide articles have been revised, edited, and supplemented with new material provided by A. R. Biggs, A. L. Jones, P. W. Steiner, T. B. Sutton, W. F. Wilcox, and K. S. Yoder.

Table 1. Glossary of terms used in this presentation.

Table 2. Total page views, user sessions, and home pages accesses for the Kearneysville Tree Fruit Web Site for the period from November 1, 1997, through October 31, 1998.

^y Numbers in this column are accumulated, approximately, by the FreeStats counter on the Home Page.

^z Based on WebTrends analysis.

Table 3. The top 50 requested pages from 11 October, 1997, through 10 October, 1998, based on WebTrends analysis of server log files

* = data from 7 May - 10 October, 1998

Table 4. The top 50 countries visiting the Kearneysville web site from 7 May through 7 October, 1998, (WebTrends)

Table 5. The top 50 North American states and provinces visiting the Kearneysville web site from 7 May through 7 October, 1998, (WebTrends)

Table 6. Unique URL visits reaching the Kearneysville Tree Fruit Web Site during the period 2 June through 4 September, 1998 and sorted by operating system

^z Based on a total of 2,728 unique URL visits to the Home Page (http://www.caf.wvu.edu/kearneysville/wvufarm1.html)as determined with the WebTracker user statistics service (http://www.FXWeb.com).

Table 7. Browsers reaching the Kearneysville Tree Fruit Web Site during the period 2 June through 4 September, 1998 (WebTracker)

^z Based on a total of 2,728 unique URL visits to the Home Page (http://www.caf.wvu.edu/kearneysville/wvufarm1.html)as determined with the WebTracker user statistics service (http://www.FXWeb.com).

Copyright Alan R. Biggs, 1998.