Web site promotion scam:
Using hits and visits in online marketing
Online scam artists commonly advertise the number of hits on their web
site to trick people into believing their web site gets a lot of traffic
and makes their company a lot of money. What most people don't realize
is that a web site's popularity is measured by the number of unique
visitors, not the number of hits.
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Link popularity and search
engines
Link popularity has become
increasingly important among the
search engines. Because link
popularity goes hand in hand
with search engine optimization,
it is important for any company
with a web presence to build a
link development strategy.
Many online marketing
specialists believe that link
popularity is simply obtaining
as many links as possible.
However, the quality of the link
holds more "weight" than the
quantity of links. You will get
better results in the search
engines if you have link
popularity from sites that have
considerable traffic.
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A hit is a single request made to a web server for an object on your web
site. The object can be an HTML file (i.e. a web page), a graphic image,
or any other embedded object in your web pages, such as a sound file.
A visit to your web site represents one unique viewer (or search engine)
who has visited your site. For example, let's say you have an online
catalog. One person visits your site and views one of your web pages.
Your web page has 10 unique graphic images on it (a masthead, bullet
points, some photos, etc.) and a sound file. Your total number of hits
would be as follows:
Number of Unique Visitors: 1
Number of HTML documents downloaded: 1
Number of unique graphic images downloaded: 10
Number of embedded files downloaded: 1
Total Number of Hits: 13
1 visitor viewing 1 web page = 13 hits
Using the above example, let's say that one person viewed 10 web pages
on your web site and each web page contained different graphic images.
Then the total number of hits would be as follows:
Number of Unique Visitors: 1
Number of HTML documents downloaded: 10
Number of unique graphic images downloaded: 100
Number of embedded files downloaded: 10
Total Number of Hits: 121
1 visitor viewing 10 web pages = 121 hits
Another piece of information online marketers neglect to tell you is how
the addition of a forward slash to your URL (i.e., web address) also
counts a hit.
Look at the place you enter a web address in your browser. Then look at
the web address you typed in. If you typed in companyname.com and the
web browser redirected the web address to the more correct
companyname.com/, that additional forward slash also registers as a hit
to that one web page.
Thus, when you hear a company advertise that their web site receives
"over 1,250,000 hits per month" but does not mention the number of
unique visitors, you know to proceed with caution.
Taking to account the number of Unique Visitors in contrast to the
number of Hits, gives a more accurate gauge of the success of a website.
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