Analysis of approaches and tools in the analysis of the website traffic of a scientific organization

The website of a scientific organization is a crucial element in the process of promoting the activities of this organization in the Internet. Today, information technology is one of the most dynamically developing areas of science, technology and engineering. The use of the most modern and technologically advanced systems of websites organization does not guarantee their popularity; systematic work is required to promote, support and supplement them. It is also necessary to monitor and evaluate the results of the work performed for the purpose of making timely management decisions to adjust the directions of further development of the website. One of the objectives aimed at achieving this goal is to assess the popularity of the websites of a scientific organization by analyzing website ttraffic. The article presents an overview of existing methods for assessing the popularity of websites. Automated approaches are considered in detail. The authors compare the most popular systems of collection and analysis of website traffic statistics (Yandex.Metrics, Google Analytics, Liveinternet and HotLog). The article reflects wide functionality of these systems. It substantiates the decision of the Institute of Socio-Economic Development of Territories of RAS (ISEDT RAS) to develop its own system for collecting and analyzing the statistics of visits to the websites. The paper describes the main parts of the system of collection and analysis of statistics of visits to the websites of ISEDT RAS. It presents statistics on the results as of June and the beginning of 2015, obtained with the help of the Institute’s own system for for collecting and analyzing the statistics of visits to the websites and also with the use of Yandex.Metric and Google Analytics. The article presents a comparison of the number of visits to the Internet portal of ISEDT RAS obtained through different systems, and notes possible causes for discrepancies in the results. In conclusion, the authors note that the analysis of the statistics of visits to the websites of scientific organizations using different systems of data collection and analysis is especially important for modern scientific organizations, including from the viewpoint of position of the institution in webometrics rankings, and also the expediency of continuing the work in this area.