The Difference Between Hits And Unique Visitors

I hear all the time someone say “I get [fill in the number] of hits on my blog everyday”.

And I’m here to tell you…

Hits don’t matter. The number of unique visitors you get to your blog DOES matter. These two things are NOT the same number or even the same thing.

If you understand what a “hit” is and how they are generated from a blog or website, you will understand why “hits” are a very poor means to determine how much REAL traffic you are truly getting to your blog.

Each time a web page or blog post is loaded into a browser, the page itself is considered one hit. Each image that loads from that page is counted as a separate hit. Any other element that has to “load” from that page is considered yet another separate hit.

Depending on the page, a single page load from a unique visitor could be counted as 20 hits or more.

So, if somebody tells me they are getting a million hits a month, I know automatically that the unique visitors that actually visit the site are a small fraction of the number of hits.

You should also probably also know that you can accumulate hits and page loads without a visitor ever even showing up on your blog. How?

One way is from spiders and robots sent by search engines and others to your blog. These can include those silly keyword spy programs that spider sites using keywords to collect keyword intelligence (HINT: you can find the keywords any website is using with the free Google External Keyword Tool).

But the important part to know is this…

Each of these spidering activities produces hits and page loads that are NOT unique visitors.

One of the reasons that I am a big fan of Google Analytics is you can accurately know how many unique visitors came to your blog or website. And it is most likely that you find that your Google Analytics numbers will be less than most any other statistics program you will use.

One reason is because Google does a lot of spidering of websites and blogs—it makes sense because they are the top search engine on the planet. Well, they don’t count their own spidering, making their stats more accurate right off the bat.

While I do use the Stat Counter plugin and service to get a feel for immediate traffic trends in real time, I depend on Google Analytics for the bottom line, actual unique numbers of visitors that I am getting.

So don’t concern yourself with “hits”. Always concern yourself with unique visitors—the kind that walk upright, have two thumbs and are old enough to vote.

Cheers,
Steve Roye
Online Business Consultant

About the Author/Founder of The Stand-up Comedy Tips Blog

Steve Roye is the author of the Killer Stand-up Comedy System and author of the content made available in the Comedy Pro Membership Program.

Over the past decade, Steve has established himself as a leading, globally recognized expert in the field of stand-up comedy material development, delivery and entertainment business strategies for comedy entertainers as well as speaking professionals.

For more information about Steve, please check out the About The Author section on this site.

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