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Web Traffic
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Don't Count Your Hit's!
Author: Maria Marsala
Do you have a hosting service that provides statistics for your
website? Did you notice that the number of "hit's" to your site is
astronomical? Many individuals think that the number of "hit's" tells
you how many visitors you've had to your site. WRONG! The correct
number to find would be the number of unique visitors or unique
sites. Even if one person visited your site 4 times and viewed 10 of
your pages, they'd count as "1" unique visitor.

What do you do if your hosting service doesn't provide "unique
visitor" statistics? According to Jim Wilson, owner of one of the
most useful sites on the web, www.jimtools.com, your "best bet is
page views when dealing with your server logs. Another way to go is
to use a service like WebTrends Live www.webtrends.com which does a
pretty good job of figuring out total visitors and first time
visitors." Jim has written an excellent article on web traffic
www.jimworld.com rafficreports.html

HIT: Every time someone views a page on your site, each page, each
document they could download on that page, and each graphic on that
page makes up the "hit's" for that page. Example: one page with 4
pictures is equal to 5 hit's.

PAGE VIEWS: Every time someone views a page on your site, the visit
is also recorded in "page views". Example: One page with 4 pictures
is equal to 1 page view.

UNIQUE URL'S: Every time someone views a page on your site, during a
24 hour period of time, the page is logged as a unique URL. Example:
One visitor viewing 1 page with 4 graphics would be counted at 5.

UNIQUE SITES: This is the number of unique visitors to your site.
Example: Each visitor to your site during a one month period is
counted as "1" unique site, no matter how many times they visited
your site.

Just to show you how the numbers vary, below are some numbers from my
site in September 2001.

Hit's: 77,158
Page Views: 10,855
Unique URL's: 548
Unique Sites: 5347

About the Author

© Copyright 2001 All Rights Reserved. Maria Marsala, Business & Life
Coach-Consultant. Maria works with individuals as they design, start
and grow their business or career around what they love to
do. Visit http://www.CoachMaria.com to subscribe to "Growing You and Your
Business" a free weekly online newsletter.

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