Blog: Conquering Nomenclature

When reviewing website traffic, here are the four most misunderstood pieces of data:

• Unique Visitors
• Visitors
• Pageviews
• Hits

So, lets take a moment to get to know each of these data points.  Unique visitors are measured by tracking the number of times a computer using an IP address has visited a website.  In some home and office networks, many computers can share a single IP address, which can result in a miscalculated number of unique visitors.

The number visitors your website receives refers to the total number of visits your website gets.  One unique visitor can visit your website several times.  Each time they visit, they are counted as a visitor.

Pageviews describes the number of times your website’s pages have been viewed by your visitors.  In most cases, a visitor will view several pages before leaving your site.  If a visitor only views one page, and then leaves, they are considered to be a “bounce.”

Your hits can be the most misleading piece of data.  A hit is counted each time your website displays an image to a visitor.  Your website’s design alone could have several images embedded into it.  Therefore, each pageview your website receives could several hits.  In the early days of internet advertising, many companies would tout the high number of hits their websites received in order to exaggerate their traffic volumes.  Even today, some people incorrectly refer to visitors or pageviews as hits.