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CancerLynx - we prowl the net
February 19, 2001

Hits vs Page Views
Alexandra Andrews and David Bradley


Every day fabulous numbers are reported about website traffic. What does millions of hits per month versus thousands of page views mean? Why are there so many graphics on a webpage? Where is the content?

To demystify these terms:
1 graphic equals 1 hit

1 webpage equals 1 page view. A page view is sometimes referred to as a request. This is because you are requesting a page be loaded when you click on an website or any of the sub pages. Loading means the webpage appears on your browser. The terms visit or visitors have no precise meaning unless the site is tracking its users. The term page view is the basic agreed upon standard

Information about a website's traffic is kept in the log file, a kind of general record. For more direct identification of the user , many websites use cookies. Similar to knowing what apartment house someone lives in, but not the specific apartment.

The number of graphics displayed on the webpage equals the number of hits. The display of the webpage is a constant number. Number of hits equals number of graphics plus 1 hit for the page

For Example:
- 1 graphic + 1 webpage ( 1 hit + 1 page view ) = 2 hits

- 10 graphics + 1 webpage (10 hits + 1 page view) = 11 hits

- 100 graphics + 1 webpage ( 100 hits + 1 page view ) = 101 hits

- 1000 graphics + 1 webpage (1000 hits + 1 page view ) = 1001 hits

- 10,000 graphics + 1 webpage (10,000 hits + 1 page view) = 10,001 hits

- 100,000 graphics + 1 webpage (100,000 hits + 1 page view) = 100,001 hits

and so on



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