Internet Tip - Don't Count Your Hit's!
Do you have a hosting service that provides statistics for your
website? Did you notice that the number of "hit's" to your site
is astronomical? Many individuals think that the number of
"hit's" tells you how many visitors you've had to your site.
WRONG! The correct number to find would be the number of unique
visitors or unique sites. Even if one person visited your site 4
times and viewed 10 of your pages, they'd count as "1" unique
visitor.
What do you do if your hosting service doesn't provide "unique
visitor" statistics? According to Jim Wilson, owner of one of
the most useful sites on the web, www.jimtools.com, your "best
bet is page views when dealing with your server logs. Another
way to go is to use a service like WebTrends Live
www.webtrends.com which does a pretty good job of figuring out
total visitors and first time visitors." Jim has written an
excellent article on web traffic www.jimworld.com
rafficreports.html
HIT: Every time someone views a page on your site, each page,
each document they could download on that page, and each graphic
on that page makes up the "hit's" for that page. Example: one
page with 4 pictures is equal to 5 hits.
PAGE VIEWS: Every time someone views a page on your site, the
visit is also recorded in "page views". Example: One page with 4
pictures is equal to 1 page view.
UNIQUE URL'S: Every time someone views a page on your site,
during a 24 hour period of time, the page is logged as a unique
URL. Example: One visitor viewing 1 page with 4 graphics would
be counted at 4.
UNIQUE SITES: This is the number of unique visitors to your
site. Example: Each visitor to your site during a one month
period is counted as "1" unique site, no matter how many times
they visited your site.
Just to show you how the numbers vary, below are some numbers
from my site in September 2001.
Hits: 77,158 Page Views: 10,855 Unique URL's: 548 Unique Sites:
5347