Hits vs Visits

Tip of the Month (originally written in 2003 and updated in 2011)

This is the most popular newsletter that I have written and I have been writing for 10 years. If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact Susan.

Table of Contents
– Question of the month: Are Hits the same as Visits?
– Definition of Hits and Visits
– Sample report from Urchin
– Buyer beware – be sure to ask: visits or hits?

Question of the month: Are Hits the same as Visits?
In your website traffic log file data you may see a number for “hits”. Many people, including Web masters and advertisers, think or claim that a hit is a visit or visitor.

The number of hits is not the same as the number of visits and is usually many times larger.

Webalizer is a popular log program. Here is a real report:
Total Hits: 3,357
Total Files: 1,441
Total Pages: 413
Total Visits: 337

You can see that the number of hits reported is about 10 times the number of visits.

Definition of Hits and Visits

Here are the official definitions from the Webalizer website:

Hits represent the total number of requests made to the server during the given time period (month, day, hour etc..).

Files represent the total number of hits (requests) that actually resulted in something being sent back to the user. This includes all of the individual items that make it up a page (such as graphics and audio clips). Not all hits will send data, such as 404-Not Found requests and requests for pages that are already in the browsers cache.

Tip: By looking at the difference between hits and files, you can get a rough indication of repeat visitors, as the greater the difference between the two, the more people are requesting pages they already have cached (have viewed already).

Pages are those URLs that would be considered the actual page being requested, and not all of the individual items that make it up (such as graphics and audio clips). Some people call this metric page views or page impressions, and defaults to any URL that has an extension of .htm, .html or .cgi.

Visits occur when some remote site makes a request for a page on your server for the first time. As long as the same site keeps making requests within a given timeout period, they will all be considered part of the same Visit. If the site makes a request to your server, and the length of time since the last request is greater than the specified timeout period, a new Visit is started and counted, and the sequence repeats.

Webalizer definitions

Sample report from Urchin

Here is a sample report from Urchin, another popular reporting tool that is now owned by Google.

Total Visitors 3,647
Total Pageviews 10,818
Total Hits 44,510
Total Bytes Transferred 181.9MB

Again the number of hits is over 10 times as large as the number of visitors.

[Note in 2011: We now use Google Analytics which is free. Read their definitions - Read more about Google Analytics]

Buyer beware – be sure to ask: visits or hits?
So, if you are shopping for Web services or paying for a link on a Web site, be sure to ask them if the number they are using for visitors is really visitors or is it “hits”.