Help for: Browsers - Agent Type

The agent type report is a session-based report, and breaks down the browser tag information that is sent with each request into recognised browser (agent) types such as Mozilla, Netscape or Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

On some sites, a large proportion of requests come from programs that browse the web for the purposes of providing search engine listings, or e-mail lists. Matrixstats labels such programs as ‘Robots’, as they do not represent real human visitors.

Throughout the evolution of the Internet, many different ‘standards’ have been developed, many of which are only compatible with a small section of agent types. Some of the newer web site technologies will only work in certain versions of web browsers. This report may show that more effort needs to be made to make the site compatible with more browsers than was originally anticipated. Many designers make the mistake of only making sites visible by, for example, MSIE. This may well exclude all users of other browser software, such as Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, or even older versions of MSIE.

The browser tag report shows the raw information that this report is derived from.

All information about the client’s computer and web browser is derived from a solitary piece of information passed to the web server, the browser tag. The following is an example:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)

Unfortunately there is no ‘standard’ way to pass the information in a browser tag. The example above contains both the web browser (MSIE – Microsoft Internet Explorer), and the operating system that the browser is running on (Windows NT 5.0 – Windows 2000). In other cases, neither of these elements may be available to use. As such, some of the tags are either non-existent or unrecognised and may not be interpreted.

The browser tag is interpreted on a per-session basis, as by the very definition of a session, the browser tag cannot change for its duration.

The date range of reports can be altered by using the calendar to the top left of the MatrixStats site.

Where a magnifying glass is shown next to entries in tables, more detailed (per-day) information is available in chart and table form by clicking the icon