Is there an easy way of finding out the number of hits a website has over any given period???

Obviously I only want legal answers!!

Cheers
Andy

PS - Any illegal ways should be emailed to me!!

 

Andy.

Firstly "Hits" is a term that needs to be carefully quantified. Strictly speaking a hit on a website is a browser requesting an item from the server. This could be some HTML or a graphic, frame or other component. Therefore for any one page on a website a number of "hit" is generated for each item on the page. The more items the more hits, therefore HITS is NOT a good way of determining the popularity of a site.

However some people use the terms HITS when the actually mean USER SESSIONS. A user session one person accessing the site for a period of time, such as me spending 10 mins on scoobynet writing this. I worked on a site that has 28million hits per month, but that was only 26,000 visitors per month.

A UNIQUE USER SESSION is defined as a unique person ie a site may have been accessed 20,000 times in a month but that could be 20 times by 10000 unique users. This lets you know how many different people would see an advert.

PAGE VIEWS let you see how many different pages people have looked at, for instance loads of people may visit a site but only look at the homepage.

IF you are looking at buying ad space on a site you want to know the number of
USER SESSIONS
UNIQUE USER SESSIONS
PAGE VIEWS

IN order to get these stats you need to run a report on the W3log using some software such as webtrends

 

i use beseen for my site it gives you an idea if people are visiting although it does not recognise individuals so count goes up every time you refresh or pop in and out etc...

Si
Ps url is

 

Hi Andy

if its your website then

 

Thanks for the answers guys!

Forgot to mention that it was research purposes!

So how many hits a competitors site has, that sort of thing!

Any ideas?

Thanks
Andy

 

Lee,

Thanks for the thing about my site, but that has to go on hold until I sort out my car!!! Have a look at my new modifications in Members Gallery!!!

Andy

PS - As soon as that's done, I'll be speaking to you!!!

 

Unless the competitor is in the business of disclosing stats on order to sell ad space the only way you can find out is via dodgy means. (hacking/sniffing etc)

If you tried it you would get nobbeled but thier IT dept or ISP/Hosts. (Quite right too)

Have a very good look round the site though becuase it could stated in a about us or investor relations statement.

 

That's what I thought. Thanks for your input Dave!

Cheers
Andy