Your Instant Access Internet Services hosting account includes built-in website statistics, so you can see how many people visit your site, which pages they view and where they come from, without installing anything. This guide shows how to view website statistics with AWStats in cPanel and how to check your bandwidth usage.
How to open AWStats in cPanel
- Log in to cPanel and go to Metrics > Awstats.
- Find your domain in the list and click View next to it. If your domain appears twice, one row is for secure (https) visits and the other for plain http visits. Since most sites now use https, the https row usually has the most traffic.
- The report opens for the current month. To see an earlier month, use the Reported period month and year menus at the top and click OK.
Statistics are processed from your server logs about once a day, so today's visits may not show up until tomorrow.
Understanding the AWStats report
The main sections you'll use most are:
| Section | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Summary | Unique visitors, number of visits, pages, hits and bandwidth for the month. |
| Monthly history / Days of month | How traffic changes from month to month and day to day. |
| Hours | The busiest times of day (in server time). |
| Countries | Where your visitors are located. |
| Pages-URL | Your most viewed pages, and the pages people enter and leave on. |
| Connect to site from | Referrers: search engines and other websites that sent you visitors. |
| Search keyphrases | Search terms, when the search engine still passes them along (most don't any more). |
| HTTP Status codes | Errors such as 404 (page not found), useful for finding broken links. |
Pages vs hits vs visits
- Hits count every file requested: each image, stylesheet and script. One page view can be dozens of hits, so this number always looks large.
- Pages count actual page views, and are a better measure of real traffic.
- Visits and Unique visitors count people (by IP address), not page loads.
AWStats counts everything that reaches the server, and tries to separate known robots into a Robots/Spiders visitors section. Some bots slip through, so AWStats numbers are usually higher than Google Analytics. For search traffic specifically, Google Search Console is the most accurate source.
How to check your bandwidth usage
- In cPanel, go to Metrics > Bandwidth.
- The page shows graphs for the past 24 hours, the past week and the past year, broken down by type: HTTP (website), IMAP and POP3 (email collected), SMTP (email sent) and FTP.
- Click a month in the yearly view to see that month's graphs and a Bandwidth by Day table.
You can also see this month's total at a glance in the Statistics panel on the cPanel home page. Bandwidth figures update every couple of hours.
Other statistics tools
- Metrics > Visitors shows the most recent individual visits, including IP address, page and browser. It's useful for checking what happened in the last few hours, before AWStats updates.
- Metrics > Raw Access lets you download your full access logs as compressed
.gzfiles if you want to analyze them in another program. - Metrics > Resource Usage shows how much CPU and memory your account is using, which helps if your site slows down during busy periods.
Common questions
Why are my AWStats numbers different from Google Analytics?
Google Analytics only counts visitors whose browser runs its tracking script and accepts cookies. AWStats counts every request in the server log, including many bots. Neither is "wrong"; they measure different things. Use one consistently to spot trends.
AWStats shows no data
A new site or a domain that was only just pointed at us will show nothing until the next daily update. Check again tomorrow. If it's still empty after a couple of days, open a ticket.
My bandwidth suddenly jumped
Look at Pages-URL, Robots/Spiders visitors and Hosts in AWStats to see whether a bot, a large download or another site linking to your images is responsible. Hotlink protection can stop other sites using your images.
Related guides
- How to Check Your Website Error Log and Recent Visitors
- Understanding cPanel Statistics: Disk Space, Bandwidth and Databases
- cPanel Resource Usage Explained: CPU, Memory and Entry Process Limits
- How to Stop Hotlinking with cPanel Hotlink Protection
Still stuck? Open a support ticket and the Instant Access Internet Services team will help.
