Realty Times October 14, 2003

Tracking Web Site "Hits?" You May Mix Apples And Oranges
by Bill Koelzer

Agents are always talking about how many "hits" they get to their Web sites, but generally most agents do not know what they're talking about.

They will look up each other's traffic stats and make seemingly profound comparisons of their "hits." However, such comparisons are often apples to oranges because a home page with 20 images on it and 5 unique visitors will show far more "hits" than a site with 5 images on it and 10 visitors. But clearly it is better to have 10 visitors than five.

It is a common mistake for Realtors, unfamiliar with Internet terms, to misunderstand the meaning of Web site "hits." The term does not mean "visitors" and it is not interchangeable with that term.

So I thought it might be good to throw in a couple definitions here so that we can all be clear on the HUGE and IMPORTANT difference between a "hit" and a far more valid standard of comparison -- the "unique visitor."

If you have ten images on your home page and a person visits your home page, doing so will rack up 11 hits; one for the page itself and one for every image.

So "hits" are not necessarily our best way to compare one site's traffic to that of another site's traffic. However, using "hits" is fine for tracking fluctuations in "hits" on only one site. Just know that the term "hits" has nothing to do with the number of visitors without first counting the number of images that are on each of the visited pages.

"Unique visitors," however, delivers more of an apples-to-apples comparison from site to site since it ONLY (or MOSTLY) tracks visitors, though some other factors enter into it, too.

Here, for everyone's edification, is how the Web-term "bible," at www.Webopedia.com defines both "hit" and "unique visitor."

Hit:

  • Also called a page hit. The retrieval of any item, like a page or a graphic, from a Web server. For example, when a visitor calls up a Web page with four graphics, that's five hits, one for the page and four for the graphics. For this reason, hits often aren't a good indication of Web traffic. Compare with page view.

  • Any time a piece of data matches criteria you set. For example, each of the matches from a Yahoo or any other search engine search is called a hit.

    Unique Visitor:

  • When tracking the amount of traffic on a Web site, it refers to a person who visits a Web site more than once within a specified period of time. Software that tracks and counts Web site traffic can distinguish between visitors who only visit the site once and unique visitors who return to the site. Different from a site's hits or page views -- which are measured by the number of files that are requested from a site -- unique visitors are measured according to their unique IP addresses, which are like online fingerprints, and unique visitors are counted only once no matter how many times they visit the site. There are some ISPs that use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, such as AOL and cable modem providers, which use different IPs for every file requested, making one visitor look like many. In this case, a single IP address does not indicate a unique visitor.

    Well, once again, good old Webopedia has saved the day, huh?

    What? You've never been to Webopedia? Well, go visit www.Webopedia.com right now and enter in virtually any Internet or Web-related term that you can think of and see how Webopedia always has the right definition.

    With Webopedia, you will never again be at the mercy of the one or two smarty-pants agents in your office who are always smugly throwing around those obscure Internet terms. Now if they do that, you can jot the terms down, run to your computer, look the terms up on Webopedia, and rush back into the discussion with something brilliant to add, thereby astonishing all of your peers.

    They'll look at you with brand new respect; (of course then they'll just try to get under your skin in some other way. But, hey, you are no longer totally defenseless, right?

    Okay, now you know all about "hits" and "unique visitors." So next time that know-it-all starts bragging about his many "hits," you just ask him how many images there are on each of his pages that deliver the bulk of those hits. Then point out how "unique visitors" or even "user sessions" is a better gauge of web site traffic.

    Oooops. You noticed that I did not tell you about "user sessions?" Okay, go right now to www.Webopedia.com and look it up. When you find the definition for "user session", you will have yet another buzzword to defend yourself with.

    The dictionary, too, is mightier than the sword!


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