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Flying Fur StudiosSo I'm going through my website stats and I"m wondering what's the differnence between a 'hit' on your site and a 'visit'.
I have tonnes more hits than visits, but I just cant imagine what the difference is.
Maybe someone here knows........ 
Bine-TeddiesI don't know, but i talk about hits, when I use a search engine (Google). The search results are hits. Maybe your site counts such searches?
Flying Fur Studiosthanks, I like using hits better anyway as it's a much larger number.........LOL
Kran-Beary'sHi,
Every file on every page is a 'Hit.' A hit is counted every time one file is accessed on your server, whether it be a page, an image, a program, js file, css file etc. So...if your home page has 10 graphics on it, it will count as 10 hits. If you have a gallery page with 40 small photos on it, you'll have at least 40 hits everytime someone accesses your gallery page.
"Hits" are basically a useless statistic because they only reflect the content of your web site ... however they are often used to promote sites because of the 'big' numbers.
A "visit" is defined differently by various log programs, but in general it refers to one IP that visits you site. Whether they visit 1 page or every single page on your site, they are just counted as 1 visit. This can be much more useful in determining how many people are actually going to your site.
A "page view" is a another useful index. It monitors how many times people visited an actual page.
"Unique visitors" is another way to measure visitors to your site. Again this is defined by the log software, but generally most define a unique visitor as an IP that visits more than say 30 or 60 minutes apart. Some advanced programs like live help may define unique visitors that vist 24 hours apart or more. 
Hope this helps you out.
hugs,
nancy tillberg
Canna Bear PaintMany of the terms that Nancy listed are interpreted differently by different programs. What she describes as a "page view" would actually be called a "hit" by many site statistic tracking programs. So a visit would be one visitor... who visited 20 pages on your web site, which counted as 20 "hits". You can test that for yourself. Make a note of what your current hits / visits number is, then visit your own web site. While you're on your web site, click around through it a good 20 times or so, or even just sit on the home page and force it to reload 20 times (hold down your Shift key while clicking the reload button in your browser). Then go see how your statistic numbers changed. Of course, that only works if you haven't told your statistics counter to exclude yourself from the results
Cheers,
Kelly
Flying Fur StudiosAhh, that makes more sense. I was wondering how I could get so many hits.
Such a wealth of knowledge here, thanks Nancy and Kelly!
Creative Design Studio (RKR4CDS)You can test that for yourself. Make a note of what your current hits / visits number is, then visit your own web site.
Kelly, would you already have been counted once as a unique visitor (from the same computer) and the numbers not change due to this?
Would it make more sense to log in from a different computer?
Canna Bear PaintKelly, would you already have been counted once as a unique visitor (from the same computer) and the numbers not change due to this?
Would it make more sense to log in from a different computer?
Nancy is correct above where she mentions that unique visitors are re-set in most tracking software over a certain time period. So if a statistics counter uses 24 hours as a mark, that means you could visit once as a unique visitor, then come back more than 24 hours later and be counted again as another unique visitor. However, if you came back sooner than 24 hours after your most recent visit, you would be considered a returning visitor, and not be counted as a unique visitor with the second visit.
Your hits (and page views) should still go up though, every time you visit and browse through your pages, regardless of whether you are considered to be a unique or a returning visitor. The only catch here is that if you want to force these numbers to go up by testing this yourself, then you have to force the web pages to re-load in your browser (shift key + reload button), otherwise your browser may be showing you a cached version of the page you visited earlier, and that would NOT count.
Edited to add:
Should probably mention that this testing will also tell if you if your hits are really counting hits by the textbook definition (see Nancy's post above), or being interpreted as "page views" which I see a fair amount of. If you load your home page 20 times and your hits go up by a much larger number, say 100... then you're counting actual hits (where every individual image and whatnot on the page counts individually). If your "hits" goes up 20 times, the number of times you forced one page to re-load... then you're really counting page views and they're just calling it "hits". LOL.
I think the important thing to remember here is that hits AND page views, regardless of what they're called, aren't really considered to be very important in the grand scheme of things. It's the unique visitors number that really tells you if people are finding your site or not.
Anyway, it doesn't help that all the stats trackers do things a bit differently from each other. It's all a bit nutty.
Kelly
Creative Design Studio (RKR4CDS)Thx, Kelly. In the overall scheme of things this makes good sense in interpreting the web stas for our sites.
We're glad knowledgeable and sharing ppl like you and Nancy are out there!
