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…
Webalizer provides an overview of your website’s traffic and visitor activity. Below is an explanation of the most common statistics you’ll see in your reports.
Hits
A hit is recorded every time your web server receives a request.
Requests include:
Web pages
Images
CSS and JavaScript files
PDF documents
Audio or video files
Other website resources
Because a single web page typically contains many images and other files, one page view can generate dozens of hits. For this reason, hits are not a good measurement of website traffic.
Files
A file represents a successful request where the server sends a file back to the visitor’s browser.
Examples include:
HTML pages
Images
PDF files
Downloads
Files provide a better indication of actual content delivered than hits alone.
Pages…