I’m not real technical
I peruse my traffic stats regularly but don’t really understand something: What are the differences between visits, pages and hits?
5 Responses to “I’m not real technical”
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October 31st, 2003 at 11:29 am
I am no authority on this for sure but the way I understand it:
Page Views are the actual pages being called from the client to the server.
Hit (counts) are usually a bigger number because not only do they included the page calls but the include any call to a external file such as a graphic file. If your page has 3 graphics there are actually 4 requests, which counts as 4 hits (to the server).
Not sure what visits are or whether you stat software defines these terms differently but that is how what I read on some FAQ a long time ago when I was looking into writing my own stat app.
October 31st, 2003 at 11:42 am
I think the smallest figure denotes the number of unique people visiting the site (as opposed to the same person hitting reload).
The thing I don’t understand on site meter is how “visit length” is calculated.
October 31st, 2003 at 11:43 am
I’m guessing (and it’s just a guess) that a “visit” is exactly that: a single visit to your site. I may visit your site once and view ten or fifty pages during my visit, but that’s still one visit.
I would expect hits >= pages >= visits.
October 31st, 2003 at 12:09 pm
visit length, I believe is calculated as the time difference between the first page you ask for and the last page that you ask for. This is why visit length for someone who only sees one page is 0.
October 31st, 2003 at 4:44 pm
Absolutely correct, on all counts.