The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article:
September 2004, Volume 3, Issue 5

Website Traffic Statistics Part 1: Defining Industry Terminology

by Dave Greten, Algorithmic Search Analyst, iProspect

Determining your website traffic statistics in a way that’s meaningful to your business is a common problem among search engine marketers. You have one set of statistics from your log files saying “x” – while your Web hosting company or SEM provider shows “y” for the same period of time. Who's right and why do such statistical discrepancies exist? The best way to begin answering this question is by first defining the different types of Web metrics currently in use by search marketers. Once these terms are defined, we can then properly examine the cause of discrepancies in Web statistics, which we will do in detail in the next edition of the newsletter. But first, let’s define the metrics of the trade.

The “Hit”

The most basic form of Internet measurement is the hit. A hit is a simple request to a Web server from a Web client. A Web client is a piece of software used to request documents over the Internet, most often a browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape. This request can be for anything, not just html pages. So if your website has a page with five images on it, it counts as six hits each time a client opens the page (the html page plus the five images). Defined in this manner, this can be a flawed view of website traffic.

The “Page View”

A page view is also a request to a Web server, but only for a single Web document (whether it is html, dhtml, asp, or whatever) and excludes images or any other requests to the server. This is a reasonably accurate form of Web traffic measurement. This metric is commonly used in online advertising to gauge page popularity.

It would seem that tracking page views would be a highly accurate metric to define the traffic success of a website. However, there are many variables at stake in interpreting the value of page views. For instance, one person coming to the site may explore fifteen pages before leaving, while another person may explore only one page. In the case of the former, these page views count as sixteen, but the heart of the matter is that two people have seen the site. As you can see, basing website traffic solely on page views may present a skewed perception of a site’s popularity.

The “Visitor”

This leads us to our third metric of website traffic analysis: the visitor. A visitor is a single client requesting information from the website server. These visitors can request a single document or a thousand. No matter how many documents they request, they are still just one visitor. They are also typically referred to in the industry as “unique visitors.” Visitors are typically identified through the use of cookies, which are pieces of encoded information placed on a web client “tagging” them as a unique entity.

Unfortunately, visitors are not so easily identified as a person walking into a real storefront. As we will see in the next edition of the newsletter, a visitor’s visit is not as uncomplicated as it may seem and can result in statistics that can also appear skewed.

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The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article: September 2004, Volume 3, Issue 5

Website Traffic Statistics Part 1: Defining Industry Terminology

The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article:
September 2004, Volume 3, Issue 5