What is the difference between “hits”, “page views”, and “user session”?
A. This is an area of great misunderstanding. Many people boast that they are getting “x” number of hits each day, and without specifying what they mean by “hits”, it can be very misleading. “Hits” are counting every file that is downloaded from the server when a visitor visits a web page. So, for example, if your main page contains 10 graphic images, each time a visitor views the page 11 hits are counted (one for each graphic image and one for the HTML file). As you can see, hits can tally up very quickly, even if only a few people visit your site. “Page views” refer to the actual HTML pages being viewed. This is more meaningful than “hits”, but still doesn’t give you a very good feel for your site popularity (one person can still account for many page views). “User Sessions” are probably the most meaningful. They count each unique visitor to your site, and only count the same visitors once per day. So you know that if you have 100 User Sessions, you had 100 unique visitors.
