Site Traffic Unique Visitors vs Page Views

Advertisers and Advertising

Advertising is an important and necessary way to get new and even established businesses seen. Deciding who to advertise with can make a difference. When offering advertising space, or considering the purchase ad space from someone else, it's important for both parties to be aware of the unique visitors, visitors and page views for a specific amount of time (this is usually shown in months, but daily is important to consider in some cases). This gives both businesses an idea of whether it's worth paying or charging for advertising on a site. Below are the site statistics to pay attention to:

Unique Visitor

A unique visitor is a unique IP address that has made at least one hit on one page of the web site during a certain period of time. If this visitor makes more than one visit during this period of time, it is counted only once as a unique visit.

*Basically, if I visit your site 1 time today, I am counted as a unique visitor. If I come back to your site 10 more times today, my visits are counted as 1 unique visit and 10 visitors.

(For more search this: define:Unique Visitor )

Visitor

A visitor is also known as a session or a user session. It is the total number of people who access a website over a certain period of time. Unlike unique visitors which is a net number, a visitor is a gross number. This means two 'sessions? by a single user would count as two visitors.

*Basically, if I visit your site 5 times today, I am counted as 1 unique visitor and then as 5 visitors for the day.

(For more search this: define:Visitor )

Page Views

The number of times a particular web page is requested from a Web host's server and delivered to a users browser. The number of page views delivered across an entire website can be used to demonstrate the volume of traffic a website receives.

*Basically, this tells you how many pages are being viewed by your visitors.

(For more search this: define:page view)

Hits

This generally means ALL requests from a webserver including requests by a web browser for html pages, jpegs, gifs and other images. Hits is a phrase often thrown around but is generally not very meaningful in quantifying search engine traffic.

*Hits count every single thing on your page that loads. It's not an accurate measure of anything worthwhile.

(For more search this: define:hits)

Website Owner Offering Advertising

If you are a website owner and wish to offer advertising to others, be thoughtful. Traffic may be a relative thing; think about if YOU would pay to advertise on a site that has that much or that little traffic.

While this information applies to your website stats, you can also put this to general use with Newsletters. If you only have 10 newsletter subscribers, you probably shouldn't charge for advertising space. On the other hand, you may be able to charge a small fee if your subscriber list is a few hundred and then accordingly as your subscriber list grows.

Business Owner Looking to Advertise

If you are considering paying your hard-earned money to advertise on another site, be informed. If a specific website hasn't volunteered their stat information, don't be shy about asking. You work hard for your money and you should have a good idea of what you are getting. You probably don't want to pay for a month of advertising when the website you are advertising on only gets 40 visitors a day. Same is to be said for newsletter advertising. If the business offering ad space in their newsletter doesn't provide the number of subscribers on their list, Ask for it. Then decide for yourself if it's worth the cost.

Free Traffic Statistic Programs

If you don't have a traffic statistic program on for your site and you want one, do a search for: Free Traffic Stats. You'll find several options. Once you sign up for a program you typically only need to add a bit of coding to your site for it to begin working. But before you choose one program over another, here is something to consider:

If you own a website business, counters don't look very professional. If the stat program you are considering requires you to use a visible counter on your site, opt to keep looking. There are programs that do not require a visible counter.

Consider this: If you visit a site, where you are thinking of placing an order, will you order if a) you don't know them, b) their counter says 115th visitor ?

Or, on the other hand, what if there counter is a HUGE number - it's probably counting every single page load and that's not an accurate count of visitors.

Both of these scenarios raise a red flag, or at least, a yellow one.. There are so many sites are out there, just keep searching.