Hits hits hits and more hits
BY DANIEL CRONIN
(September 10, 2002)
Daniel Cronin is the creative genius behind ShutMeUp, a free lance writer,
and a guy with a lot of tips and tricks to share.
Hits hits hits and more hits...
There's no denying it, we all want them... But how exactly do you get them?
Not all counters are the same. Generally there are four types of hit counters, and will yield four different hit totals. Hits, Impressions, Visitors, and Unique Users.
A hit occurs every time your web server serves a file.
This file can be HTML, a graphic, or any other piece of media stored
on your server. This means that a single HTML page displayed can
generate many hits. You will usually only see this type of hit
in your servers access log file.
An impression(or page view) is counted every time a
page has been loaded. This type of counter can be very effective
if placed correctly.
Example... If you have a splash page, put the counter there.
Since that page will usually only be loaded once, for every
time a person visits your site.
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A visitor simply is a person who visits your site.
Usually counts 1 hit per IP address.
A unique user is, in short, a computer.
No matter how many pages or files that computer accesses,
it will only count as one unique hit. Cookies can be set on that
computer, and then access by the counter to be sure the
count is accurate.
Suggested counters:
Extreme Tracking - Records unique hits, last 20 visitors, referrers... etc...
Fast Counter - Yeah... Microsoft owns this, so it'll load fast. Counts unique hits.
OKCounter - Counts hits, loads fast. Looks cool.
HotScripts.com - You can run a counter from your server. Pick the one you like.
Bravenet - Counts unique hits. Also some other goodies =)
It's best to put a hosted counter after all of your code,
it can stop your site from loading until the counter is finished.
Now that you know what hits are, and how they are recorded, we can move on...
Part 2 Gimme gimme gimme >>
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