Hits vs Visits

A lot of people think that the words “hits” and “visits” mean the same when measuring the number of visitors on their website. While measuring the traffic of a website, it is important to understand the difference between a hit and a visit.

Every time a web browser such as Internet Explorer, Chrome, or Firefox requests for a file from a web server, a hit is recorded. Generally, web pages consist of a number of files. For instance, a web page is a combination of several different files such as a graphic file, side menu, and terms and conditions file. Whenever a user views a web page, more than ten hits might get registered on the web server. Therefore, a hit is a term that indicates the number of files downloaded from a server. A visit is registered on a web server whenever a user opens a web page irrespective of the number of files downloaded from the server. Whenever a user tries to view a web page, it is considered as a single visit no matter how many more pages on that website are opened.

A hit is often a request made to a website for a particular file to be downloaded from the server. When a user clicks on a web page, regardless of the number of files downloaded, it is called a visit. The difference between the two terms can be explained with the help of an analogy. Consider a bookshop where a user goes to buy some books. The user enters the shop (Visit) and picks up some books which he would like to purchase. If the user flips through the contents of the book and looks at a few pages, in order to see if it’s exactly what he needs, then it is (Hits).

The hits also represent the total number of physical resources that were requested from the server. A visit, however, represents the number of times the user visits the website to view a single page or multiple pages.

Both visits and hits are important statistics; however, the number of visitors is of much greater importance because that provides information about the potential customers visiting the site. Hits provide information about the total number of files downloaded or the total number of pages viewed by the potential customers. As this information can help to check the effectiveness of a website through a simple calculation called hits-to-visitors ratio. The ratio helps to determine the depth of the site and also helps to figure out if any measures need to be taken to improve the website if the stats are bad.

Summary:

1. A hit is a request for a file for download from the server whereas when a user opens a

website to view some page it is referred to as a visit.

2. A hit may be a request for a graphic file, an HTML file, an audio file, etc. while visits

consist of one or more page views/hits.

3. The hits represent the total number of physical resources that were requested from

the server whereas a visit represents the number of times the user visits the website

to view a single page or multiple pages.

4. Hits provide information about the total number of files downloaded or the total number

of pages viewed by the potential customers whereas a visit provides information about

the total number of potential visitors to the website.

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