The influence of caching on web usage mining

Most web servers collect lots of data during their daily operation. Information, such as which pages are requested and who is responsible for these requests, is stored in log files. The analysis of these log files may yield worthwhile information on how to adapt the site to improve the user experience. However, the data in the log files is usually not stored in a format suited to perform analyses. Many operations are needed to transform the logs in a format that is convenient for the chosen type of analysis. After an overview of these operations, we will discuss how caching of pages can skew the results of studies. We will show how caching can be detected and how one can deal with it. Afterwards, the techniques are applied to the data of a European online wine shop.