If you are running a website it is imperative that you are aware of your user stats and that you use those stats to revamp the way you do business both online and in real life. Unfortunately, it can be rather confusing if you are just getting started. Here is a list of “must know” terminology that will help you figure out what you are doing.
PageRank: how important Google thinks a page is on the web. Google assigns every page a number based on a somewhat complicated algorithm. This number is out of 10.
Page Views/Page Impressions: the number of requests to load a single page. This is recorded when a person clicks on a link to a specific page and is usually what advertisers are concerned with.
Page Hits: the number of times a file is sent to a browser by a webserver. If you have a page with 10 pictures that needs to load it will send be sent 11 times to the browser (10 for the images and 1 for the html file). This is not a reliable way to track site traffic because it includes bots and other non-human requests.
Visitors: when a person visits a site his/her browser accepts a cookie (a small data file placed on the computer when visiting a site). If this cookie is not javascript:void(0); accepted, IP address is used.
Return Visitors: a person who views the site but does not need to accept the cookie as it is there from previous visits.
Unique Visitors: visitors who return to a site more than once during a 24 hour period (although the time frame differs depending on the tracking program used).
Log Analyzer: tracks activity to a website but does not distinguish between human activity and spiders and bots which are sent out by search engines. Not an accurate indicator of traffic.
Tracking Services: tracks activity to a website but does not include the following as unique or human:
- repeat unique visitors (after 24 hours)
- hits
- robot and spider traffic
- rotating IP numbers (i.e. AOL)
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