Understanding Web Statistics
Now that you've started publishing on the Internet, you'll want to gauge how you're doing. There are several traffic counters available. Site Meter (
Hits: Every item that contributes to building a page counts for one hit. A page with four graphics will count for five hits because the HTML document that constitutes the pages is counted as well.
Page views: The number of HTML pages served from your site. If one person looks at your home page and three pages of archives, she has been counted for four page views.
Visits: Visits are counted by tracking the individual Internet service provider (ISP) addresses of the people who visit your site. It should indicate how many individuals were at your site, except that sometimes a proxy server that serves several people may count as only one ISP address.
When you hear someone bragging about how many hits his Web site gets, be wary. It's not a legitimate indicator of Web traffic. Most Webcartoonists measure their traffic by the number of page views their counter tracks.
