Understanding your website’s traffic is key to improving performance and user experience. Web Hosting Canada provides two powerful tools for viewing detailed statistics on your website visitors: Webalizer and AWStats. These applications offer insights into visitor counts, popular pages, referral sources, geographical location, and more—helping you make data-driven decisions. While both tools surface similar information, they present it differently so you can choose what suits your workflow.
What you can learn at a glance
Visitor and unique visitor counts by day and month
Top pages and file types requested
Referrers (where visitors came from)
Search keywords and user agents (browsers/bots)
Geographic distribution of traffic
Tip: Statistics are generated from raw access logs and may update periodically (e.g., every few hours). If you don’t see today’s visits yet, check back later.
Enable Webalizer and AWStats in cPanel (prerequisite)
Go to Metrics then Metrics Editor.
Ensure Webalizer and AWStats are enabled (activated), then click Save.
Tip: Don’t see Metrics Editor in your cPanel? It may be hidden by your theme or plan. Contact WHC support and we’ll help you enable it.
Access Webalizer and AWStats in cPanel
In the Metrics section, click Webalizer or AWStats.
Webalizer: shows clean graphs and monthly/daily breakdowns—great for quick overviews.
AWStats: provides deeper analytics (referrers, search keywords, user agents, countries) with drill-downs.
For more details, see the official cPanel documentation:
Which one should I use?
Tool | Best for | Highlights |
Webalizer | Fast, visual overview | Simple graphs; quick trends by day/month; easy to skim |
AWStats | Deeper analysis | Referrers, keywords, user agents, countries; granular drill-downs |
Tip: For a quick health check, open Webalizer first. When you need to investigate a spike or drop, switch to AWStats to dig into referrers, pages, and user agents.
Next steps (making the data actionable)
Track unique visitors weekly—watch for sustained trends, not single-day spikes.
Review Top URLs to identify content worth improving or promoting.
Check Referrers to validate campaigns and discover new traffic sources.
Scan User Agents to separate human traffic from bots when analyzing performance.