What is the difference between a hit, a page view, a visit, and a visitor
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Hit - A hit is any request to a web server. Each time a visitor downloads a page, clicks a hyperlink, views a graphic, or performs any other action on a web site, a call is made to the web server. The web server records each of these requests in a log file. These requests are commonly known as “hits,” and the loading of a single web page can amount to many hits, due to all of the elements it contains.
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Page View - A page view represents a hit to any file designated among the page file types. The most common examples are files ending in .html, .htm, .php, .asp, or .aspx.
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Visit - A visit is a session of continuous activity where all hits are recorded in the log file for one visitor to a web site. The visit starts the moment of the first hit on the web site and continues until the session ends through inactivity. By default, if a visitor is inactive for 30 minutes or more during a session, the visit is terminated and a new visit begins when activity resumes.
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Visitor - A visitor is a person who visits a web site. Visitors are generally tracked by either an IP address or a cookie, although other methods of “sessionizing” the data are possible. The stronger the session tracking method, the more accurate the visitor metrics will be. Authenticated User is a strong session tracking method because it is based on sessions where users are required to log into the web site, but IP/User Agent is a weak session tracking method because any number of users may be on subnets behind a certain IP address.
Meaning of Hits, Visits, Page Views and Traffic Sources - Web Analytics Definitions
- Visit - This is the one piece of information that you really want to know. A visit is one individual visitor who arrives at your web site and proceeds to browse. A visit counts all visitors, no matter how many times the same visitor may have been to your site.
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Unique Visit - This is also called Visit by Cookie. A unique visit will tell you which visits from item 1 are visiting your site for the first time. The website can track this as unique by the IP address of the computer. The number of unique visits will be far less that visits because a unique visit is only tracked if cookies are enabled on the visitors computer
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Page View - This is also called Impression. Once a visitor arrives at your website, they will search around on a few more pages. On average, a visitor will look at about 2.5 pages. Each individual page a visitor views is tracked as a page view.
- Hits - The real Black Sheep in the family. The average website owner thinks that a hit means a visit but it is very different (see item 1). A Hit actually refers to the number of files downloaded on your site, this could include photos, graphics, etc. Picture the average web page, it has photos (each photo is a file and hence a hit) and lots of buttons (each button is a file and hence a hit). On average, each page will include 15 hits. To give you an example - Using the average statistics listed above, 1 Visit to an average web site will generate 3 Page Views and 45 Hits.
- Traffic Sources - How do visitors find your site
- Direct Navigation (type URL in traffic, bookmarks, email links w/o tracking codes, etc.)
- Referral Traffic (from links across the web, social media, in trackable email, promotion & branding campaign links)
- Organic Search (queries that sent traffic from any major or minor web search engines)
- PPC (click through from Pay Per click sponsored ads, triggered by targeted keyphrases)