Hits are meaningless, but visitors are everything.
Ask anyone how web traffic is measured, and they will respond that a site's popularity is judged by how many "hits" a site has.
But just what is a "hit" and how important are they?
In the world of Internet traffic, a "hit" is defined as: a logged interaction between the web server and the client (visitor) computer. A hit isn't a fully viewed web page, however. A hit can be registered with every small menu item, graphic, design element, photo, file, and every other tiny piece that makes up a website's viewable page.
Website owners, especially those selling advertising, are quick to tout how many hits they have. It's always an impressive number. A truly savvy internet advertising buyer, however, will not be swayed by the inflated figures.
In the very first web pages, 12-15 years ago, each page contained a handful of files at most—one or two pictures and an HTML file (the page itself). It was not unreasonable to count your traffic by those files. As such, "hits" became the common lingo to measure traffic. This is no longer the case.
For example, a modern website such as ESPN.com may log 200 hits for every time you view its home page. Every ad, every menu button, every section heading, every block of feed, every video preview, every tiny building block of the site is counted as a hit.
Hits are therefore not a consistent measure of traffic/popularity of a website. If a site owner wants to know exactly how many people visit and how many pages they view, the more accurate numbers to track are unique visitors, visits, and pages viewed.
Contemporary website statistics software can detect when a full page is seen by a visitor. This statistic is called a "page view" and is an excellent gauge of how much content is being visited. It does not, however, tell us how many individual people are visiting the website.
A visit is a collection of page views while that happen in the same browser window over a short period of time. Visits are a good measure of traffic, but not of people because it is unclear if those visits are by the same person at different times in the day, or entirely different visitors.
Visitors, also called "unique visitors", are the measure of how many distinct computers have connected with the website in the given period. Unique visitors are, for practical purposes, people. When using that number compared with visits and pages, a site owner is given a comprehensive picture of the traffic of their website and how long each person spends there, how much of the site they read, and more.
In the more advanced analysis of site statistics, two new terms were introduced to the site-owner's vocabulary by search engine behemoth Google: "bounce" and "sticky". To track the amount of users that see a website and leave without clicking anything on the page, Google has labeled that statistic the "bounce rate" in their popular (and free) tracking program Google Analytics.
By that token, site owners created the opposite of "bounce", and refer to sites that can retain users and entice them to click around the site as "sticky".
For example, a site like ESPN.com can be a little of both. Since you can read recent scores without having to click anything, you might "bounce". But, the stories only show a small introduction or headline, enticing the reader to click to get the full story. Thus, many portions of the site are "sticky".
While individual numbers are relative and can't compare one site from one niche to another, tracking a site's statistics over time will help the site owner evaluate for changes and initiate improvements when needed.
As a business with a Web site it is important to know what your traffic counts really are and what parts of a site are the most pupular.
As an advertiser on a Web site you want to know if a site is going to your demographic.
That information is certainly available, but it certainly is not called "hits."
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