If anyone ever tries to sell you anything online and uses the term “HITs”; then you should know that they are trying to trick you. We are almost a decade into the internet era and Real Estate Agents and Brokers are still getting deceived by the term “HITs”. According to Wikipedia “When a webpage is uploaded from a server the number of “Hits” or “Page hits” is equal to the number of files requested, therefore one page load does not always equal one hit because often pages are made up of other images and other files which stack up the number of hits counted. Because one page load does not equal one hit it is an inaccurate measure of a websites popularity or web traffic.” You can see a good illustration of the relationship of HITs vs. Page Views vs. Visitors to the right. Thus one visitor to a website can generate 1,000’s of HITs.
HITs are a bogus term when it comes to website traffic. A consumer should ask for Visitors, Unique Visitors and Page Views. If a website will not provide you with those numbers and continues to quote you the number of “HITs” they receive then you should never do business with them. We see many websites trying to embellish their size by quoting how many “HITs” their website receives and then passing that number off as Visitors.
I realize this is more of a rant than a blog post, but I get really upset to see companies knowingly mislead consumers.
2 responses so far ↓
David // Jun 3, 2007 at 10:50 pm
I run a large FSBO network in the North Georgia Mountains. Specialize in land. I am one of the folks you talk about that talks about “HITS”. “HITS” is an old industry term that has indeed probably outlived it’s usefulness. There are actually 4 kinds of terms that potentially apply: HITS, PAGE VIEWS, VISITORS, UNIQUE VISTORS. Naturally UNIQUE VISITORS is the important one, but page views should be used in conjunction with that to determine effective useage of a site. But in the defensive of myself and others - most of us aren’t internet tech junkies - we’re salesmen and marketers. Hell, it took me years to figure out my own webstats. At one point I actually thought that the HITS were the visitors. It also doesn’t help that in WEB TRACKING SOFTWARE, there is often little differentiation, or it’s crap software, and the actual users themselves got duped into using a crappy product that doesn’t give true reporting. But I agree with you overall about the truth in marketing, and what people should look for is a combination of UNIQUE VISITORS & PAGE VIEWS. Page Views is important, because they should be quite substantially higher than Visitors, or else it shows people are just clicking into main page, immediately getting turned off and then leaving. Personally, wht I do is put individual counteer on the individual property pages, which allows advertisers to track their individual results. Much more honest in my opinion.
Andrew // Aug 19, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Very interesting - I’m not sure if you guys know this, but Google offers a free analytics program which gives you an accurate view of what is actually happening on your site.
MANY people try to be deceptive about what is happening with their sites. But what we use most often is Unique Visitors, Page Views and Pages Viewed per Unique Visitor.
The latter category can show you how “deep” a visitor will go into your site, and how rich your content is. The across-the-board internet average of Pages Viewed per Unique Visitor is something like 3 or 4 (ours is over 7, which is something we’ve worked very hard to accomplish).
Anyway, I recommend going to Google.com/Analytics and having your site tracked on that program. It’s extremely detailed, and very, very (this is important) FREE!!
Take care - Andrew
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