When you own a website, one of the most common questions people ask is: How many hits do you get? Well, genuine website owners and those in the Internet business would never use the word "hits". Hits are commonly misinterpreted as a means of measuring website success; however, the number of hits is not equal to the number of people visiting a site, nor is it equal to the number of web pages viewed. Visitor statistics and page views are more accurate tools for measuring website success. So what is a hit? Web pages are usually comprised of a number of individual files. In order to display a page for viewing in a web browser, you must request each of these files from the web server.

Each request counts as a hit. So if you have a web page that is comprised of 60 images for example, then every time that page is viewed it will increase the website's hit-count by 60, even though it is truly only one page view. Website companies often mention how many "hits" they get to bolster their image or visibility. But not only is it inaccurate, it is extremely misleading and dramatically over-estimates the sites popularity. A good friend of mine - Erik J. Russell - wrote on his website: "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics."

A website that boasts one million hits per month, for example, could really be talking about less than 25,000 unique visitors in a month, which is a much more accurate, useful and valuable statistic. So the real point is always ask how many unique visitors someone receives, as opposed to hits. To give you an example, BahamasLocal.com gets around 225,000 unique visits per month, as opposed to 18 million hits per month.

Points to remember:

• Hits don't mean users or visitors.

• Always ask about unique visits.

• One million hits could equal 25,000 unique visits.

• Hits are used as a misleading marketing tool. Hits do not give true value to a website.

 

• Online Edge is a weekly feature aiming to improve how you interact with technology. For more information on this article, you can send an email to customerservice@bahamaslocal.com, or call 676 2683. BahamasLocal.com is a user-friendly search engine with exclusive listings on business and community organizations in The Bahamas. It includes information pertaining to business, news, classifieds, movie listings and local events.

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