A "landing" takes place when a user arrives for a new visit at Landings.
A "takeoff" takes place when a visitor follows a link from the Landings
Web site to another site on the Web.
(A landing without a subsequent takeoff means that the user left
the Landings site by some other means, such as using the browser
"back" button or by selecting another Web site by other means - such as
by using a bookmark file.)
The count of "landings" shows the popularity of the Landings
Web site (and the size of the audience of Landings.com.)
The count of "takeoffs" shows how useful the Landings site is
in relation to the aviation web at large. Since Landings.com is a central hub
for aviation online, it is a single source of reference to all other aviation sites
on the web. The online aviation community utilizes Landings to learn about and to
visit industry sites. Currently Landings.com generates over 150,000 such visits
(called clickthroughs) each and every month for the aviation industry. This is a
substantial number equivalent to 150,000+ calls for catalogs each month via one
central processing hub.
At Landings, each visitor receives a unique ID which stays valid for the duration
of the visit (up to 2 hours). A visitor can requests any number of pages (e.g. 1 or 100 pages)
during a his/her visit. All page requests made by this visitor during their stay are
associated with a unique ID attached by the Landings' software. Thus, if a visitor
requests 10 pages or 100 pages, all these page requests are associated with one ID and thus
with a single visitor.
The above is also true in relation to hit counts. Each page request generates multiple
hits and each visitor generates many page requests. The software links all these hits
with a single visitor and thus provides the most accurate visitor count on the net.
The count is not dependent on hits numbers, unique host numbers, or any other metric,
nor does it rely on 'cookies'. (To understand more about the difference
between hits, page counts, and visitors
read this).
Landings is unique in its ability to tell
how many takeoffs were generated in a given time frame -- a capability that
is not matched elsewhere on the net (to the best of our knowledge).
Distributed Processing
Landings.com is served using multiple servers. Each server provides a set of functions.
There are multiple servers handling database requests, there are additional servers for
page requests, image requests, secure transaction handling, and for managing other
aspects of the site.
Dynamic Processing
Pages are served dynamically: when a request for a page is received, the Landings servers
respond by assembling the components of this page into a complete HTML page. This assembly
may require the composition from multiple sources: files, memory based buffers, database
components, or even remote components. This method is used to provide rotating advertising
where each page gets served with a different set of advertisements. The same method is used
for addressing different types of browsers or net agents (such as robots). In the future
the same method will be used for additional advanced features.
Software
The main processing sofware that makes up Landings.com was developed by
DRIVE, Interactives. It has served many millions of
pages since its inception in 1995. The software includes components to handle secure
transactions, online stores, dynamic processing, mail, TCP/IP connectivity,
advertising management, server management and additional features.
