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These are some of the web analysis metrics used to measure a website’s traffic performance. We usually hear about them on news where they report a particular Blockbuster’s view rate. That’s similar to this metrics analytics.

Hits

Hits are geenrated when your browser downloads a file from the website’s server to your computer. Any files that are requested is considered a hit, eg. php, wav (music files), jpg (pictures), PDF, RAR, DOC etc etc…

This metrics is useless, because everytime a page is loaded, you may be receiving up to 5-10 hits. The reason is because a page consists of several files, which the server has to pass it to your browser in order to display it correctly.

Page views

This is a more accurate metric commonly used in web publishing. A page view is considered whenever someone refreshes a page / a piece of content / a text on your web server or web application. This means it counts by page numbers, for an entire page.

This is more accurate than hits, since 1 page view may consists of 5 hits. This figure is especially important on CPM(Cost Per thousand iMpressions) advertising campaigns where they take into consideration how many times an ad is flashed onto someone’s browser.

Visits

A visit is considered a connection session between the computer and the server hosting your site. Because of the way internet browser works, a connected session may last not more than 60 seconds or a cut off value, depending on the configurations. This means that a single computer may be initiate several visits to the site within that few minutes.

This metric is a little tricky, because once the web content is downloaded to your browser, the connection terminates. And if you click a link on the site, it counts as a new visit. But if you session stays alive throughout, it may be considered as one visit. So this gives you a rough guide on how many visits you have served.

Unique Visitors

A unique visitor is the most metric in today’s web traffic analytics. Given the right tools of awstats and google analytics, we can tell the number of unique visitors accurately (or almost accurate). This is important because it tells you how many unique visitors are visiting your site.

It represents an individual visiting viagra buy online your site once, by tracking each individual IP address. Assuming your IP stays static, a visit means a unique visit for the month. This way, it is a clear indicator about how many people actually check out your site, instead of how many times someone refreshes his browser.