What Are Hits?

What Are Hits?
A hit is a request for one file from a web server. For example, if you request (i.e. visit) a single web page which contains only text, the web server will send you that page as a file. This process is called a hit.
1 File Request = 1 Hit



In the early days of the Internet, hits were a reasonable way of tracking how many pages were viewed. Each page was one file, so hits equalled page views (more or less).
The problem is that in today's Internet, each page is typically made up of multiple files. Each time you request a page you receive a whole bunch of responses — each of which counts as a separate hit.
1 Page Request = Multiple Hits

It is quite common for one visitor to generate dozens or even hundreds of hits during a single visit.
Clearly hits are a gross exaggeration of the number of visits, but it gets worse. Because websites are designed so differently, there is no common baseline for determining how many hits an average visitor generates. If a website uses 25 icons in their navigation menu, it will generate a lot more hits than a site which uses a single image file. This makes hits absolutely useless when it comes to reporting traffic volume.


Hits
Any request made to the server which is logged, is considered a 'hit'. The requests can be for anything... html pages, graphic images, audio files, cgi scripts, etc... Each valid line in the server log is counted as a hit. This number represents the total number of requests that were made to the server during the specified report period. E.g. Accessing a page with 3 images on it will count as 4 hits (1 for the html page and 1 for each image).

Files
Some requests made to the server, require that the server then send something back to the requesting client, such as a html page or graphic image. When this happens, it is considered a 'file' and the files total is incremented. The relationship between 'hits' and 'files' can be thought of as 'incoming requests' and 'outgoing responses'.

Pages
Pages are, literally just pages. Generally, any HTML document, or anything that generates an HTML document, would be considered a page. This does not include graphic images, audio clips, etc... This number represents the number of 'pages' requested only, not images or anything else included in the document featured on the page.

Visits
Whenever a request is made to the server from a given IP address (site), the amount of time since a previous request by the address is calculated (if any). If the time difference is greater than a pre-configured 'visit timeout' value (or has never made a request before), it is considered a 'new visit', and this total is incremented (both for the site, and the IP address).

Sites
Each request made to the server comes from a unique 'site', which can be referenced by a name or ultimately, an IP address. The 'sites' number shows how many unique IP addresses made requests to the server during the reporting time period. This DOES NOT mean the number of unique individual users (real people) that visited, which is impossible to determine using just logs and the HTTP protocol (however, this number might be about as close as you will get).

KBytes
The KBytes (kilobytes) value shows the amount of data, in KB, which was sent out by the server during the specified reporting period. This value is generated directly from the log file, so it is up to the web server to produce accurate numbers in the logs. In general, this should be a fairly accurate representation of the amount of outgoing traffic the server had. (Note: A kilobyte is 1024 bytes, not 1000 bytes)

Top Entry and Exit Pages
The Top Entry and Exit Pages give rough estimates of what URL's are used to enter your site, and what the last pages viewed are. Because of limitations in the HTTP protocol, log rotations, etc... This number should be considered a good "rough guess" of the actual numbers, however will give a good indication of the overall trend in where users come into, and exit, your site.