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Hits,
Page Views, Uniques - Determining What They Mean
Hits
Hits (sometimes referred to as "requests") is how many files
are actually requested from your web server. This includes images, javascript
files, html files, movie or audio files, just about anything you put onto
a webpage that is kept in a separate file from the html file.
Page
Views
Page views refers to the actual number of times each page on your site
is viewed, by all users. If the same user visits the same page three times,
this is usually considered three page views, although this can vary with
your stats program.
Unique
Visitors
Uniques visitors (often referred to as "uniques") is the number
of individual users who visit your site in a 24 hour period. Whether the
person visits one page or one hundred pages, this is still considered
one unique visitor. This is tracked by individual IP address, although
it can cause confusion when someone using AOL for their internet connection
surfs your site. Someone on AOL can view twenty pages using twenty different
IP addresses. Some of the higher end stats program will take this into
account, while others do not.
And
this means...
Now what does this all mean? If one person surfs your site and views twenty
pages before leaving, the stats on this person would be:
200 hits, 20 page views,
1 unique visitor (estimating each html page has 10 files it calls).
Don't
be fooled...
It also tells you to not be fooled if someone is bragging about having
200,000 hits per month - that equals a significantly smaller number of
page views per month. If purchasing advertising, always request page views
per month, don't rely on hits - particularly when some pages could have
30 or 40 advertising images on a page.
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