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"Impressions" Same as "Hits"?

by Marhelper
12 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I want to make sure I am comparing apples to apples here. I had someone tell me that they got such and such an amount of impressions. If I am using AW Stats and see numbers under "Hits," is that equivalent?
#hits #impressions
  • Profile picture of the author travian
    Banned
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    • Profile picture of the author Marhelper
      Originally Posted by travian View Post

      Maybe you are confusing page views and unique impressions? If that is not what you are thinking then you are talking about 'hits' and 'impressions'. Hits and impressions are often considered the same thing. They are just two different words for the same thing. These are just different words people use for the same thing like 'tomato and tomata'.. well not really but i couldn't think of a better example.
      These are the options and I am assuming that impressions (as he calls it) would equate to "hits?"

      Unique visitors

      Number of visits

      Pages

      Hits

      Bandwidth
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      • Profile picture of the author PAH Tim
        Originally Posted by Marhelper View Post

        These are the options and I am assuming that impressions (as he calls it) would equate to "hits?"

        Unique visitors

        Number of visits

        Pages

        Hits

        Bandwidth
        I think you might find this helpful. I hope you don't mind me linking you to it instead of posting it... Web analytics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Check out Key Definitions.
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  • Profile picture of the author PAH Tim
    I've always been to the understanding that an impression, hit or page view is exactly the same thing, just different terminology used by different analytics software.
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  • Profile picture of the author UMS
    An "impression" is short for "page impression".

    Page Impression = Page View

    That means 1 impression for each page viewed.

    A hit is a request to the webserver for each element on the page. If you have a lot of graphics, one page view may generate a large number of hits.

    In terms of web statistics, the most important stats are:

    Unique visitors - Self explanatory

    Visitors - This includes repeat visitors. If your content is good and regularly updated, you hopefully have repeat visitors.

    Search Terms - The search terms that people used to find your site

    Referrers - The sites that people clicked on a link to get to your site

    Bounce Rate - The percentage of visitors that view a single page and leave your site.
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    • Profile picture of the author SteveBagasao
      Originally Posted by UMS View Post

      An "impression" is short for "page impression".

      Page Impression = Page View

      That means 1 impression for each page viewed.

      A hit is a request to the webserver for each element on the page. If you have a lot of graphics, one page view may generate a large number of hits.

      In terms of web statistics, the most important stats are:

      Unique visitors - Self explanatory

      Visitors - This includes repeat visitors. If your content is good and regularly updated, you hopefully have repeat visitors.

      Search Terms - The search terms that people used to find your site

      Referrers - The sites that people clicked on a link to get to your site

      Bounce Rate - The percentage of visitors that view a single page and leave your site.
      What he said :-). I was prepared to get into a detailed explanation myself, but there's really nothing left to say after Peter's explanation. Good job!
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    • Profile picture of the author CDarklock
      Originally Posted by UMS View Post

      A hit is a request to the webserver for each element on the page. If you have a lot of graphics, one page view may generate a large number of hits.
      This is a little bit off.

      A hit is when a resource is requested from the web server.

      An impression is when that resource is displayed to the user.

      In an ideal world, every hit generates an impression, and since the web server doesn't know which hits did... it assumes every hit does.

      So to answer the OP's question, "technically no, but for all practical intents and purposes yes."
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      "The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone." - Lord Dunsany, The Messengers
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      • Profile picture of the author Bill Farnham
        If a visitor goes to your webpage and doesn't scroll past "the fold" (those things which show without scrolling) you can generate hits and impressions that are never seen by your visitor.

        Different screen settings will yield different size windows into your website. Some will see things without scrolling other will miss. (Images, ads, links, etc.)

        Generally, hits mean nothing. When you clicked on this thread you generated a lot of hits for the WF.

        BFD...

        ~Bill
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    • Profile picture of the author paul_1
      Originally Posted by UMS View Post

      An "impression" is short for "page impression".

      Page Impression = Page View

      That means 1 impression for each page viewed.

      A hit is a request to the webserver for each element on the page. If you have a lot of graphics, one page view may generate a large number of hits.

      In terms of web statistics, the most important stats are:

      Unique visitors - Self explanatory

      Visitors - This includes repeat visitors. If your content is good and regularly updated, you hopefully have repeat visitors.

      Search Terms - The search terms that people used to find your site

      Referrers - The sites that people clicked on a link to get to your site

      Bounce Rate - The percentage of visitors that view a single page and leave your site.

      Thanks for the info! This is very enlightening.lol
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  • Profile picture of the author ericbryant
    LOL yes "what he said"!
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  • Profile picture of the author skyyisthelimit
    your add could have 1000 impressions,s o 1000 people viewed it. but hit is when they click on it.

    no problem
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Originally Posted by skyyisthelimit View Post

      your add could have 1000 impressions,s o 1000 people viewed it. but hit is when they click on it.

      no problem
      Houston, we have a problem!

      Paul
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      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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  • Profile picture of the author angrej
    Measuring traffics in hits usually returns you a proudly large number. Hits is also known as request and it’s the total number of files loaded when a single page is requested from the web server. So how hits are calculated? Picture this – a single web page with 20 images (transparent.gif, header-background.gif, etc)is loaded, that’s 20 hits for starters. The web page has 10 photos (jammie.jpg, group-photo.jpg, etc), that’s another 10 hits. if you add up the CSS files, Javascript files and all the external files, each time a web page is loaded, it can easily build up more than 50 hits. If you clear cache, reload the page, another 50+ hits again.
    Hits are rarely used to to judge a website’s traffic nowadays as they are not really accurate. The numbers are big and certainly cool, but generally useless.
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