What numbers REALLY matter?
I'm still a relatively new web master and continue to learn each day. One thing that confuses me though is in respect to the "stats" generated by the server. I'm not sure which ones are the important ones to most people. For instance, what's the difference between "Hits" and "Visits". I get people asking me how many Hits the site generates instead of asking about how many Visitors the site gets. To me, the amount of visitors is much less than the hits received.
One day the site had only 54 visitors but generated 39,084 hits. On another day the site had 57 visitors and generated 16,693 hits. One more example would be 69 visitors and 17,615 hits. So......what numbers are the ones that REALLY matter, and why?
Thanks for any clarification, it's always appreciated.
Signed,
Just a rookie......
redwilly posted this at 17:48 — 1st September 2005.
He has: 47 posts
Joined: Jul 2005
ummm, i think visits are unique visitors, and hits are total views of your site (including page refreshes), however im not quite sure considering if you had 54 visitors and 39,084 hits each visitor would have to view or refresh your website 724 times...
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02bunced posted this at 18:12 — 1st September 2005.
He has: 412 posts
Joined: May 2005
You're right except that counts for all images, css files as well. Thus 39,084 doesn't seem unreasonable
NewTechGuy posted this at 18:19 — 1st September 2005.
He has: 57 posts
Joined: Dec 2004
Thanks for the input. It now raises another question for me. What does "total views" actually mean? Is it each time 1 page is viewed? Each time an image is loaded? Each time a page is refreshed? Or all of them combined? Or maybe even something else?
Thanks again for any input....
chrishirst posted this at 18:24 — 1st September 2005.
He has: 379 posts
Joined: Apr 2005
depends on your stats package what defines a visit Usually it would be one or more page views by a single IP.
Hits are each request to the server for each constituent part of a page eg: Images, js files CSS files. So a page with 10 images, a .js files and a .css file would equal 11 hits for one page view.
Chris
Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
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NewTechGuy posted this at 22:01 — 1st September 2005.
He has: 57 posts
Joined: Dec 2004
Hmmmmm.........thanks for the input. Now it's making more sense to me. Very interesting indeed.
It also makes me wonder, why then, do some people love to say things like... "My site gets X amount of hits"?
Some people are even very proud of their amount of "hits". Could it possibly mean that they do not fully understand what the term "hits" really means?
I also wonder if it is possible that different server software has a different way of reporting stats?
Either way, it's all very interesting to me now. Starting to make sense. Thanks for your input.
bja888 (not verified) posted this at 22:19 — 1st September 2005.
They have: 5,633 posts
Joined: Jan 1970
Most people dont understand how the consept of a "hit" while others just hope you dont. My hosting gives me a "total page views" and I wrote a script to track hits on my main pages (for each of my sites).
dougadam posted this at 15:59 — 15th September 2005.
He has: 87 posts
Joined: Jun 2005
If your visitors have to refresh when they try to view your site. Then I would check your load time.
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