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Whats the difference between a hit and a visitor?

Hits and Files

A hit is a request from web browsers for a file from your website. All visits to a web site generates file requests, and all requests to the web space are registered as “hits”. Therefore, a hit can cover requests to HTML pages, images and all kinds of other files. For example, a page in HTML that consists of some text and two images will therefore result in three hits; one for the page itself and two for the images.

Most requests will result in a response from the web server; either in the form of a HTML page, images, sound, etc. Such responses are registered as “files”, i.e. that “files” can be defined as the outgoing response to a request.

Pages and Visits

“Pages” are the HTML documents that are displayed. This does not include components on which the page is built, such as images. In order to be registered by the statistics programme as “pages”, the file name must end in “.htm” or “.html”. This makes “pages”, or “pageviews” as it is also called, a more reliable indicator of the popularity of your website.

“Visits” reflects how many visitors your site has had. Each time a request is sent to your web space, the statistics programme calculates the time period since the visitor’s IP address has previously made a request. If the time period is greater than 30 minutes, the request is registered as a new “visit”.

Sites and Referrers

Each request to the web space comes from a website that can be referred to via a name or an IP address. All these requests are registered by the statistics. The field, “Hosts”, shows how many unique IP addresses have made requests in the applicable period.

The figure does not show the number of individual visitors as such a statistics calculation is not possible – based on a standard HTTP log. However, the “Hosts” figure can be considered as an approximate indication of the number of individual visitors.

“Referrers” tell which pages, that via links, deliver visitors to your website. When a visitor comes on to your website by clicking on a link, the visitor’s browser automatically transfers information on which page it comes from. This referral is called a “referrer” in the statistics. A referring link is only registered by the statistics if the link has actually been clicked on. “Direct Request” means that the visitor has entered the domain name in the browser.

Visit Duration, Extensions and Kbytes

“Visit Duration” tells how much time is spent on the site and “View Duration” tells how much time is spent on the individual pages.

“Extensions” specify which file types have been seen, “Hosts” specifies which host the visitor comes from and “Countries” specifies which country the visitor comes from.

The “Kbytes” field shows the volume of data measured in KB, which is sent from the web space. Note that 1 kilobyte corresponds to 1024 bytes. “Requested URLs” are pages that are requested on the web space.

Visitor statistics is a regular topic of discussion among web masters and one of the much discussed terms is “unique visitor”. Even though you are led to believe that statistics is a very precise science, a lot of different opinions prevail on the correct method to establishing what a “unique visitor” is. For example, how much time should pass between each visit to a website before a specific visitor can be termed a unique visitor again?

Google Analytics statistics

The most widespread, free statistics programme is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is an advanced statistics programme that is free and user-friendly. It can be combined with the advertising programmes, Google AdSense for website owners and Google AdWords, which is directed to advertisers.

Google analytics’ statistics functions by using a small java script file you insert on your website. Google Analytics is especially practical if, e.g. you have an web shop and want to analyse how you can increase your sales. A statistics programme can also be used to optimize the way in which the website’s navigation is structured.

You can find more information and register for Google Analytics for free here: Google Analytics

Visitor counter

In addition, there are alternative and simpler programmes to calculate visitors, among others, the so-called visitor counters. For example, Site Meter is a very popular counter. It can be an advantage to combine several statistics programmes or visitor counters to obtain a more precise figure.

(Written by One.com)