Web Statistic reports can often times leave those people reviewing the report scratching their heads if they are unfamiliar with the terms being thrown about. One of the most common requests we receive from our clients when they are reviewing such data, whether be it Google Analytics or AW Stats, is what do these terms actually mean?
Well..to clear up some confusion, the following are some helpful explanations of the most common terms.
It is someone with a unique IP address who is entering a Web site for the first time that day (or some other specified period).
Each person visiting your site is counted only once during that period, no matter how many times they visit your website
Number of visits
This is the total number of times that your website has been visited and when you compare it with the number of unique visitors, this gives you an idea of the number of people who are returning to your site.
Page view
Pretty self explanatory really, often time advertisers use the number of page views a site receives to determine where and how to advertise. When you divide the number of page views by the number of unique visitors, this can give an excellent indication of whether traffic is transient or is staying on your site
Hit or Request
The term Hit is often confused with the term Page View. A page may have five Hits but only one Page View. This is because a hit can be any file such as a html document, an image file, an audio track etc being requested and served by your web site. Web pages that contain a large number of elements will return high hit scores.
Visit Duration
Total length of time a user spends on your site in one visit
Referrer
A referrer is simply the origins of the visitor to your site, i.e. the last site visited and the page on that web site.
Bounce rate
Bounce rate means the number of people who visit a site or specific page who proceed no further. For example, if your bounce rate is 60%, then that means 60 out of 100 visitors to your site only view a single page.
For a full glossary of terms from Google -
click here
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Dominick is Fireball's jack of all trades. He's been part of the team since 2007 and has always been focused on great design, usability & SEO.
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