Definitions

One of the initial challenges behind web statistic-gathering technology is the need for a set vocabulary that is recognized throughout the web development industry and among different vendors. Most web professionals agree that a hit is defined as a single request for the web server to send up a website landing page to a viewer’s browser. Closely related to a hit is a page view, which entails the sending of a recorded website hit to the rest of the collected data. When methods of log file analysis are used, multiple sets of hits can make up one page view; often an additional method such as page tagging is needed in order to keep an accurate count of both hits and page views.

Visits and sessions are terms that are often used interchangeably to describe the time each visitor spends on an individual website. These can range from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on individual visitors’ purposes for typing the website address into their browsers. As a general rule, webmasters refer to a session as at least 30 minutes spent on the same website. After this amount of time has lapsed without activity, most standard website sessions will shut down if the visitor has not moved to another site or done any additional activity. Amounts of time that are shorter than 30 minutes are generally referred to as visits, even if the same user returns to the same site briefly several times within the same hour or day.