How many times have I been asked: “How many hits does your website get a day?”
Frankly, I find that difficult to answer. If I give them the correct answer, they may say I am trying to be smart. If I say, it depends on what you mean by “hits”, they may think that I am trying to hide my website stats or I am also being evasive.
But in all honesty, my answer is: What do you mean by “hits”?
Firstly, definition of the term “hit” varies. Among webmasters, a “hit” is a request for a file from a web server. A file can be a web page, graphic, icon, banner, sound file or anything. If for example, you type in your browser address box http://thefilipinoaustralian.com/index.php which is the homepage of The Filipino Australian News, when that page is displayed, that single page display will be equivalent to at least 17 “hits” or 17 files being served to you. These are:
Top Page:
* 1 top banner ad
* 1 logo
* 1 photo in the feature box
Left Sidebar:
* 1 Facebook image
* 1 Australian visa image
Middle Column:
4 thumbnail images of the Recently added articles
Right Sidebar:
* 2 images of 125×125 ads
* 1 image 250×90
* 3 icons preceding the section headings
* 1 image for local bloggers
* 1 Google ad
If you return to The Filipino Australian News homepage after going to another page, chances are your web browser would pull the files from your hard drive cache or in a temporary computer memory storage rather than request again the server. Cache-ing speeds up the display of pages and since the files are now in your computer memory, no additional hits are generated, and thus not counted.
Although many websites are still encoded to display static pages, these days many pages are generated dynamically and served “on the fly.” Requests for these pages create more “hits”.
In our earlier example, the pages which will be served on the fly are:
1 top story link
Left Sidebar:
10 story links
Middle Section:
* 10 story links
* 3 links to A Matter of Sharing
* 10 links to Recent comments
These pages which will be served on the fly would be equal to 34 “hits”, or altogether the homepage would create at least 51 “hits” each time the page is requested or opened.
Obviously, we need to be careful when someone says, “My website can give you 10,000 hits a day.”
Hits are not the same as visitors. Hits are just files making up a page which are also served or displayed each time a page is requested or opened.
If you are an advertiser, what does this mean?
As an advertiser, if a site uses “hits” as a point of reference you need to know how that site defines “hits”. Other sites use the term to mean actual visitors. Although this is an improper use of the word, still it gives you an idea what you are buying.
To avoid any misunderstanding with the publisher, it should be made clear at the outset what the advertiser is paying for. If the agreement is that the rate is based on the number of times an ad is displayed, then this should be made clear. In which case, the rate would be based on page views (or page impressions) sometimes called the CPM model or cost-per-thousand views.
The advertising rate could also be a time-based rate, like a flat monthly fee. Or, the advertising rate could also be based on number of clicks called pay-per-click like those of Google ads.
Regardless of whether an advertiser is willing to pay based on page views , a fixed time-based fee or even click throughs, this should be made clear before starting an advertising campaign.
But whatever you decide, do not decide based on “hits”. This is one term which requires a lot of explanation. At times, it is also the cause of misunderstanding.
