July 30, 2009 PSA: Web Site “Hits” is NOT a Valid Measurement Metric. It Hasn’t Been Since 1999.
When someone asks me how many “hits” their Web site is getting, they really want to know is how many visitors (“visits”) came to their site.
I think a lot of people use “hits” and “visits” interchangeably. This isn’t a problem unless you (or your team) are actually looking at “hits” in your Web analytics software (i.e. Google Analytics) and counting them as “visits” in your company marketing reports.
Let me quickly explain the difference between “hits” and “visits:”
Back in the early days of the Internet, “hits” was a commonly used metric. It was all about how many “hits” your Web site was getting. The bigger the number, the better.
The problem is that it’s a misleading number.
Let’s assume for a second that your home page has your company logo, two photos and some copy. When someone visits that page, your Web analytics software (i.e. Google Analytics) is going to count 4 hits (the logo, two photos and the page itself).
It should actually only count as one visit. In this example, if you have 50 people visit your home page, there are going to be 200 hits. Let’s expand this example even further. What if these 50 people visit one more page (that has two images on it)? That’s an additional 3 hits for that page multiplied by 50 visitors (150 total hits). Take those additional 150 hits and add them to the original 200 hits. That’s 350 hits and still only 50 visits.
A “visit” (or session) begins when someone loads a page on your Web site in their Internet browser and ends when the end-user leaves the site (or closes their browser). In addition, visits time out after a set period of time (typically 30 minutes).
Do you see how “hits” can be a misleading number?
