When we set up a blog or a website for our clients, we also initiate web statistics. These software programs run in the background and keep track of visitors. We also install Google Analytics, which has more detailed search capabilities.

Web analytic programs count the number of visits to your site in a day, week or month, and the number of unique visitors. Stats can also tell you the duration of visitors on your site, or how long they spent viewing each page.

Years ago, many people ran a “hits” counter. A hit refers to a single file on a webpage. Most web pages have several files: one for the page itself and one for every banner, ad and image on the page. One of your web pages might have 20 files if it displays a lot of pictures; another page might have only 2 or 3. Additional hidden files include templates and style sheet files.

When people visit your site, all the files making up each of your web pages are delivered to their computers. Their own browsers (such as Internet Explorer or Safari) arrange your files so visitors can see your pages as your designer intended.

A “hit” counter does not make distinctions. It just counts up all the files that people have downloaded. Person A might view just your homepage with 5 files on it. Person B might visit your homepage plus two more pages – each of which has a different number of files on it. Person C might look at every page and dozens of pictures.A hit counter counts the number of files that were downloaded by all of your visitors – each of whom viewed a different number of pages with a different number of files on each page – and gives you one big total. So this is a meaningless number.

Unique visitors, on the other hand, is a count of the number of individual people who visited your site on a given day, week or month. If your sister visits your site 10 times from the same computer, she is still only counted as one unique visitor. Unique visitors is the best indicator of your website’s performance.