Stop Saying "Hits"

Nobody cares how many hits your web site gets. Nowadays, its all about how many monthly unique visitors you have. Consider the following from a recent article on WebMarketingNow.com:

A "hit" is not a visitor to the web site, but a hit on the web server. A hit on the web server can be a graphic, java applet, the HTML file, etc. So, if a site has 79 small graphics on the page, every visitor to the site registers as 80 hits on the server (79 graphics plus the HTML file). In this case, 80,000 hits translates to just 1,000 visitors.

Now ask yourself this: If I were interested in someone else's web traffic, would I be interested in their "hits" or their actual unique visitors?

From now on, stop using counters to measure your web traffic - as these only measure page views. Use a web traffic analysis program (such as Google Analytics) that will give you the number of actual visitors and other vital information such as where visitors are coming from, what paths your visitors are taking, and which pages are the main exit points of your site.

Occasionally, some advertisers may be interested in how many page views your web site can generate. This is because they want to know how many times their banner ads will be displayed, even if its displayed more than once to the same person. Regardless, this is much different from a "hit" - which I promise you, means absolutely nothing.