As part of SharePoint 2010, we have created a set of features to help you collect, report, and analyze the usage and effectiveness of your SharePoint 2010 deployment.  These set of features are a part of the Web Analytics capabilities of SharePoint 2010. The overview of the Web Analytics features in SharePoint 2010 was presented in this blog post.

This blog post delves deeper into the various metrics available to analyze the site usage data. There are three categories of the SharePoint Web Analytics reports: Traffic, Search, and Inventory. The reports are aggregated for various SharePoint entities like Site, Site Collection, and Web Application for each farm. Further, reports are also aggregated per search service application. By default, the reports show the data for a period of 30 days. One can change the time period to view data for up to 25 months by going to ‘Analyze’ tab.

Visually we show the metrics in one of the two ways: trend reports and rank reports. A trend report shows how a particular metric is doing over a period of time. While a rank report, shows the top 2000 results for a particular metric. Figure 1, 2 show examples of a trend and rank report respectively. That’s not all; you can further analyze the reports by applying filters like string match in the URL, user name, queries, browser and others.

Figure 1:  Example of a Trend Report showing Number of Page Views for each day for a default period of 30 days.

Figure 2:  Example of a Rank Report showing the Top Pages sorted on the Number of Page Views for a default period of 30 days.

What follows is an overview of each type of the report and the associated metrics. Also, summarized are the kind of reports available for each level of aggregation i.e. Site, Site Collection and Web Application and Search Service Application.

Traffic Reports

The traffic reports capture the user behavior information related to total clicks, frequent users, popular pages, and information about navigation to and from the current SharePoint component.

Trend Reports

1. Number of Page Views: Total number of page views each day.
2. Number of Daily Unique Visitors: Total number of unique visitors each day. SharePoint authenticated users and anonymous users (using IP address) are counted as visitors.
3. Number of Referrers: Total number of unique URL’s external to the current entity (parent entity is treated as external as well), from where the users navigated to the current entity.

Rank Reports

1. Top Pages: Most viewed pages in the current entity.
2. Top Visitors: Most frequent visitors of the current entity.
3. Top Referrers: Top URL’s external to the current entity from where users navigated to the current entity.
4. Top Destinations: Similar to Referrers, these are the top external URL’s that the user visited from the current entity.
5. Top Browsers: Top browsers being used to visit the current entity.

Table 1:  Summary of the traffic reports availability at different SharePoint hierarchy levels

Note: Traffic Reports do not apply at Search Service Application level.

Search Reports

The search reports capture the user behavior information related to the queries on the site.

Trend Reports

1. Number of Queries: Total number of queries each day.

Rank Reports

1. Top Queries: Most issued queries per day.
2. Failed Queries: Most issued queries for which either there were no results or the user did not click on any results.
3. No Result Queries: Most issued queries for which no results were returned.

Other Reports

1. Best Bet Suggestion Report: Recommends URLs as most likely results for particular search queries based on analysis of usage patterns. The site administrators can accept or reject these suggestions. If they accept, the corresponding query-URL pair is added to the search keywords list.
2. Best Bet Usage: Shows how Best Bet suggestions are doing over time. For every Best Bet query issued, the report shows the percentage of clicks on the Best Bet URL compared to other URLs.
3. Best Bet Action History Report: Tracks the actions performed by the site administrator on the ‘Best Bet Suggestion’ Report.

Table 2:  Summary of the search reports availability at different SharePoint component hierarchy levels

Note: The search reports do not apply at Site Level.

Inventory Reports

The inventory reports are targeted to help the site administrators in managing the site by keeping track of the site structure and storage and version issues.

Trend Reports

1. Number of Site Collections: Total number of site collections for each Web Service Application for each day.
2. Storage Usage: Total storage used in Megabyte (MB) for a site collection and the ‘Maximum Storage Allowed’ in MB for each day.
3. Number of Sites: Total number of sites within each Site Collection for each day.

Rank Reports

1. Top Site Product Versions: The ‘Site Product Version’ sorted in the order of ‘Number of Sites’ or ‘Percentage of Overall’ sites using the corresponding version for this site collection.
2. Top Site Languages: The ‘Site Product Language’ sorted in the order of ‘Number of Sites’ or ‘Percentage of Overall’ sites using that language for this site collection.

Table 3:  Summary of Inventory Reports availability at different SharePoint component hierarchy levels

Note: Traffic Reports do not apply at Search Service Application level.

Look out for more to come

Keep an eye out for more blogs on customizing the reports using Excel, using workflow feature to scheduled reports and alerts and adding the ‘What’s Popular’ Web Part to your pages.

As part of SharePoint Server 2010, we have created a new set of features to help you collect, report, and analyze the usage and effectiveness of your SharePoint 2010 deployment – whether it’s used as an internal or external web portal, a collaboration tool or a document and records management repository.  These features are part of the Web Analytics capabilities of SharePoint 2010.

This blog post is the first of several that will give you more insight into the enhanced Web Analytics features that we have built into SharePoint 2010. This first post will provide an overview of the new Web Analytics features and we’ll take a deep dive in to specific scenarios in future posts.

Overview

Web Analytics Reports

In SharePoint 2010, we have improved the set of Web Analytics reports that are available out-of-the-box, which will provide insights into the behavior of users of your SharePoint sites.  There are three categories of reports that you will find:

• Traffic reports: These reports provide metrics such as:
1. How much traffic your site gets (Number of Page Views);
2. Who visits your sites (Top Visitors);
3. How visitors arrive at your site (Top Referrers);
4. Daily Unique Visitors, Top Destinations, Top Browsers, etc;
• Search reports: These reports give you insight into what users are searching for, for example:
1. How many times users searched (Number of Queries);
2. What were the most used search terms (Top Queries);
3. What queries have high failure rates (Failed Queries);
4. Best Bet Usage, Search keywords, etc;
• Inventory reports: These reports display key metrics regarding the inventory of your sites:
1. What is the total disk drive space user (Storage Usage);
2. How many sites exist (Number of Sites);
3. Top Site Product Versions, Top Site Languages, etc;

We aggregate these reports aggregated at the following levels:

1. Per web application in the farm
2. Per site collection
3. Per site
4. Per search service application

Out-of-the-box, these reports are visible to Administrators at each level.  For example, site-level reports are available to Site Administrators of those sites.  We have also added a new permission level, “View Web Analytics Data,” that will allow users to access these reports without having to give them Administrator privileges.

You can access Web Analytics reports by going to Site Actions -> Site Settings.  Under the Site Actions heading you will see two links, Site Web Analytics Reports and Site Collection Web Analytics Reports. 

When you click on either link, you are taken to an overview page that shows you key metrics for your site.  You can then drill down to other reports by clicking on them on the left navigation. You can also change the date range for the reports by clicking on the Analyze tab on the Ribbon.

Custom Web Analytics Reports

The out-of-the-box reports are useful to get a general understanding of what is happening on your sites.  However, we have made it easy for you to get a deeper level of analysis, or to simply create your own reports.  To get started, click on the Customize Report button under the Analyze tab in the Ribbon.  Clicking this button will export the data contained in this report to Excel.  Excel is a power analytics tools and makes it easy for non technical users to add your own charts, set specific filters, and combine data from multiple reports.  In addition, the data within Excel is refreshable, which means that, once you customize the report, it will always be up-to-date with the latest data.  To get more details on the great new features in Excel 2010 for building charts, reports and pivot tables, take a look at the Excel Team blog.

Web Analytics Workflows

Web Analytics Workflows is a powerful new feature set that enables you to get reports sent out either on a schedule or when specific conditions are met.  For example, you can set them up to receive an email every time the total number of pages views drop by 80% week over week.

To setup a Web Analytics Workflow, go to the Web Analytics report that you are interested in and click on Schedule Alerts or Reports on the Analyze tab in the Ribbon.

Clicking this button will guide you through a series of steps to create your Workflow.

Best Bets Suggestions

Best Bets allow Search Administrators to determine what the most relevant search result is for a given keyword. Up until now, Search Administrators had to look at different reports and data to determine which best bets needed to be added. That process is no longer necessary as SharePoint 2010 periodically sends out suggestions for new Best Bets using all the search metrics it has collected. Now, Search Administrators can simply look through each of the Best Bet suggestions and easily accept or reject them.

To access the Best Bet Suggestions, go to Site Actions, click on Site Collection Web Analytics Reports, and the click on Best Bets Suggestions on the left navigation.

Web Analytics Web Part

We have created a new web part, the Web Analytics Web Part, targeted at Site Managers. This new Web Part is an end-user facing Web Part that can be easily inserted into any page on your site.  It can be configured to display the ‘most viewed content’ or the ‘most frequent search queries’ in the site. The data in the Web Part is continuously refreshed as new content or new search queries become more popular.

To use this Web Part, go into the Edit mode of one of your Site Pages and click on any place you can add a Web Part.  Then, from the Insert tab on the Ribbon, click on Web Part.  Finally, click on the Content Rollup category and select the Web Analytics Web Part.

After you have inserted the Web Analytics Web Part, you can then configure it to display the data you are interested in.

Conclusion

Using the new Web Analytics features in SharePoint 2010, you will be able to get a deeper understanding of what users are doing, what they want from your site and how you can tailor the SharePoint experience to bets meet their needs.   Keep an eye out for future posts where we will delve deeper into each of the features mentioned above.