Traffic stats

[schnisz]

Newbie question here- When checking stats in my cpanel can sombody please explain what the difference is between hits, files, pages, visits, and sites? What number should I be the most concerned with? Thanks

Brian

[TheCren]

Um... if you're using AwStats there is not "sites." If you're using something else that does have a "sites" category, I don't know what the hell it is to be honest. The same with files, although I would think "files" would be the same as hits.

1) A hit is triggered anytime someone requests something from your site. So when they visit a page, all the elements (images, flash movies, video files, audio files, the html file or php file itself, etc.) on that page generate a hit.
2) A page is a single page. I don't really know how to put it simpler than that. It's whatever appears in the address bar at the top of the browser window. Each page will (usually) trigger several hits.
3) A visit is anytime someone comes to your site and stays for a continuous amount of time. As soon as they leave that visit is over. When they come back it counts as another visit.

One you didn't mention is "uniques" or "unique visits" or "unique visitors." An IP address only get counted once for this metric. So if I visit a site, then leave, and then go back to that site... it counts as two visits, but only one unique visit.

[ChrisG]

And as a newbie you should be most concerned with unique visitors, since you'll probably be most interested in how many unique individual people find your website.

[nicholasb]

I focus mainly on my uniques, you should use google analytics to track your stats to each page or site you have

[Graham Maddison]

For easy to understand and follow stats, use StatCounter Free invisible Web tracker, Hit counter and Web stats

graham