When viewing your website statistics, you’ll see several different measurements such as Hits, Page Views, Visits, and Unique Visitors. While they all measure website activity, they each tell a different part of the story.
Understanding what these numbers mean will help you better evaluate your website’s performance.
Hits
A hit is recorded every time your web server receives a request.
For example, when a visitor opens a single news article, their browser may request:
- The web page
- Your website logo
- Several images
- Stylesheets
- JavaScript files
- Fonts
Although the visitor viewed only one page, dozens of hits may be recorded.
Hits should not be used to measure website traffic.
Page Views
A Page View is counted each time a visitor loads a web page.
For example:
A reader visits your homepage and then opens three news stories.
That would result in:
- 4 Page Views
- (One homepage plus three articles)
Page views are one of the best ways to measure how much content your audience is consuming.
Visits (Sessions)
A Visit, sometimes called a Session, is a group of pages viewed during a single browsing session.
For example:
A visitor arrives at your website and reads:
- Homepage
- Local News
- Sports
- Obituaries
- Weather
This counts as:
- 1 Visit
- 5 Page Views
If the visitor leaves and returns more than 30 minutes later, Webalizer records a new visit.
Visits help you understand how many browsing sessions your website receives.
Unique Visitors (Sites)
A Unique Visitor is an estimate of how many different people visited your website during the reporting period.
Webalizer estimates this by counting unique IP addresses.
Because some visitors share internet connections while others may use multiple devices, this number should be viewed as an estimate rather than an exact count.
Which Number Is Most Important?
Each statistic answers a different question:
Hits: Total requests made to the web server.
Page Views: How many pages were viewed by readers.
Visits: How many browsing sessions occurred.
Unique Visitors: Approximately how many different people visited your website.
For most newspapers, Page Views, Visits, and Unique Visitors are far more meaningful than Hits.
Example
Suppose one reader visits your website and:
- Reads the homepage.
- Opens four news stories.
- Views one photo gallery.
- Leaves the website.
Your statistics might look something like this:
- 1 Unique Visitor
- 1 Visit
- 6 Page Views
- 40–100 Hits (depending on the number of images and other files loaded)
As you can see, hits are usually much higher than page views because every image, script, and supporting file generates its own request.
Looking at Trends
Rather than focusing on a single day’s numbers, it’s more useful to look at how your statistics change over time.
Questions to ask include:
- Are page views increasing month over month?
- Which stories receive the most readers?
- Which sections of the website are most popular?
- Where are visitors coming from?
- Which pages keep readers engaged the longest?
- Which articles encourage visitors to explore additional content?
Monitoring these trends can help you make informed editorial and advertising decisions while better understanding the interests of your audience.
Remember
No analytics system is perfect. Factors such as browser caching, bots, shared internet connections, and privacy settings can affect reported numbers.
The goal isn’t to obtain an exact count of every visitor—it’s to identify meaningful trends and use that information to grow your audience and improve your website.