6 Logging Usage
Usage data can be generated in a number of ways, and COUNTER does not prescribe which approach should be taken. The two most common approaches are:
Log file analysis, which reads the log files containing the web server records of all its transactions
Page tagging, which uses JavaScript on each page to notify a third-party server when a page is rendered by a web browser.
Other options are to leverage Distributed Usage Logging (DUL) to capture content activity that happens on other websites. Each of these approaches has advantages and disadvantages, summarised below.