Hits are really a reference for how many files are being downloaded from the web server. In the days when web pages only had one file associated with them, it made more sense to use hits as a measure of traffic on a website. These days one web page is made up of many different files. Each file downloaded is considered one hit. How many files (hits) per page can vary greatly. So it doesn’t make sense to use hits for measuring traffic any more (unless you want to know how much you’re using your web server).
Technically, hits refers to how many files have been downloaded from your website. Every page on your site is made up of many different types of files that get put together by your web browser into one “page”. A page is a file (or several), as are each of the images, videos, podcasts, and stylesheets that are referenced by that page. So for every page on your website you’ll probably have at least 10 files or “hits”. Larger sites can have as many as 100 files or “hits” per page.
Most of us are concerned with how many people are visiting our website, and we equate that with traffic. In that case it makes more sense to use visits or unique visits (unique visits being a measure of how many uniquely different people visited your site, as far as can be determined).
Sometimes people get a bit confused with the terminology regarding website statistics. Sometimes when people say “hits” they really mean visits, or pageviews, or unique visitors…. With so many things associated with the word “hits” it’s not hard to understand how people can be confused by the term. So when talking about your website statistics, it’s important to understand what number you’re talking about, since the meaning behind that number varies quite a bit.
Statistics can be a bit confusing… I think I’ll try to cover them again in a more detailed post….
For more information:
- B2B Analytics Basics (good for all businesses)
Technorati tags: analytics, statistics, marketing, strategy, business
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