sounds boring, huh?

these days we often read advertisements where businesses use their website data to
promote themselves with. i understand the impulse, but lets see how all that works.

a certain Belizean news website says they get 56,000 HITS a day and its the
most popular website in Belize.

now lets analyze that HIT statistic closely.

HITS for a website equals page hits plus image hits. so when a web viewer
looks at a webpage, if that webpage has 50 images on it, the statistics
add the 50 image hits plus the one html page hit. So viewing this page
would generate 51 HITS.

thats KEY. one viewer viewing one webpage generates 51 HITS. that makes HITS
a total bs number to use in advertising because it adds image hits plus
the html page hits.

the proper number to use to show one's website traffic is unique hosts,
or visitors. with this stat, one viewer viewing 100 webpages generates
ONE VISITOR or UNIQUE HOST. whereas that one viewer viewing 100 webpages
generates 51 X 100 or 5,100 HITS (assuming the 50 images per page example above)

quite a difference. one person equals one visitor or one person equals 5,100 hits.
you can see why people are tempted to use that hit number. looks better.

so the Belizean news website saying they are the most popular with 'as many as' 56,000
hits a day. lets break that down. their current front page which contains
the weekly news has 55 images on it. plus the html page. so viewing this website
by one unique visitor equals 56 "hits". so divide their 50,000 hits by 56 hits per page,
that's 892 visitors. hmmm. huge difference. 50,000 a day or 892. hmmmm. linguistics.
words can dance.

now for comparison, the san pedro sun website has not had less than
2000 viewers on any given day, unique hosts, since dec 5th (excluding nyeve
and christmas). 2608 yesterday lots of 2800 and 2900's in there. so the sun
website gets at a minimum triple the traffic of the supposed most popular website in Belize.

if i advertised the number of 'hits' on ambergriscaye.com. the number would be HUGE!!! 5 billion
visitors a day! more than the population of the whole planet!!!!

well maybe not. let me go see.

Here's the traffic for AmbergrisCaye.com

An Overall Summary For Each Day

...............|....Page ...|.....Total....|...Unique...|
....Date....|..Accesses..|.....Hits.....|...Hosts....|
------------+------------+--------------+------------+
02/09/2006 | 93012 | 526304 | 17684 |
02/08/2006 | 87781 | 542081 | 17960 |
02/07/2006 | 82319 | 545413 | 17903 |
02/06/2006 | 79270 | 528562 | 17706 |
02/05/2006 | 73950 | 399226 | 15727 |
02/04/2006 | 63367 | 400782 | 15842 |
02/03/2006 | 69419 | 457182 | 16632 |
02/02/2006 | 79480 | 508069 | 17544 |
02/01/2006 | 146056 | 612048 | 17599 |
01/31/2006 | 84764 | 548910 | 18175 |
01/30/2006 | 147456 | 650652 | 18627 |
01/29/2006 | 115402 | 563276 | 18326 |
01/28/2006 | 112438 | 473995 | 15945 |
01/27/2006 | 111135 | 555309 | 17113 |
01/26/2006 | 123149 | 616469 | 19317 |
01/25/2006 | 111382 | 661016 | 20019 |
01/24/2006 | 116010 | 704582 | 19724 |
01/23/2006 | 81644 | 577999 | 18650 |
01/22/2006 | 70339 | 470802 | 17588 |

so about a 500,000 to 700,000 HITS a day
but about 16,000 to 20,000 visitors, or unique hosts, per day

here's the stats for belizenews.com

An Overall Summary For Each Day

...............|....Page ...|.....Total....|...Unique...|
....Date....|..Accesses..|.....Hits.....|...Hosts....|
------------+------------+--------------+------------+
02/09/2006 | 8209 | 124046 | 6845 |
02/08/2006 | 8020 | 128827 | 7178 |
02/07/2006 | 8702 | 134491 | 7373 |
02/06/2006 | 7614 | 126504 | 7208 |
02/05/2006 | 4444 | 85694 | 5101 |
02/04/2006 | 5467 | 92897 | 5112 |
02/03/2006 | 7758 | 114747 | 6268 |
02/02/2006 | 7990 | 123861 | 6961 |
02/01/2006 | 8377 | 127506 | 7128 |
01/31/2006 | 7955 | 135450 | 7332 |
01/30/2006 | 7777 | 138760 | 7574 |
01/29/2006 | 4281 | 120170 | 6718 |
01/28/2006 | 4597 | 94185 | 5118 |
01/27/2006 | 7116 | 120323 | 6646 |
01/26/2006 | 7920 | 139118 | 7662 |
01/25/2006 | 8182 | 148731 | 8475 |
01/24/2006 | 8662 | 151722 | 8241 |
01/23/2006 | 7276 | 136017 | 7707 |
01/22/2006 | 4234 | 103119 | 6017 |

so belizenews.com gets 6,000 to 8,000 folks a day, but racks up
100,000 to 150,000 of those good old HITS

sites with a lot of small images making up the framework rack up the 'hits'

easiest way to drive up traffic using hits is to divide your images into
pieces. make every image ten -20 pieces and traffic goes up X 10-X 20!!!!!!!

VOILA!!!

anyway, just a lil lesson in how to read advertising for websites that
promote with web traffic data.....

and that "certain Belizean news website" preaches high moral standards and honesty in their editorials.

I don't have this problem at http://djshane.blogspot.com/

I pay my ex mother in law to sit all day at the screen and mark down on a piece of paper when someone new stops by... she licks the pencil then writes a 1... I average anywhere between 150 to 200 hits a day, depending on whether she is awake or not.

You'd get more hits if you gave her a tequila-flavoured pencil.

thanks Denny, i lik eyour method.
mmmm. i think she's dozing

sprdaily, you crack me up

in just over 6 months online, the San Pedro Daily
is getting 700 folks a day, if the belize news site with 50,000 hits
after years of operation is getting 892 folks a day. then http://sanpedrodaily.com
is doing awfully well.

I am SO glad you posted this! I am using it as a weapon right now! Yipeeeeeee! I love being right!

SPD... if I gave her a tequila flavored pencil she'd think she was the boss.

Do you get these figures from a web site Marty - it seems all sites are available or are you hacking somewhere?!!!!! It would be very interesting to check some of the multiple vacation sites that try and get you to sign up. Of course we all know that only one is needed!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for this above info too, as I had no idea, and should have.

Those numbers make my 800-1000 a MONTH seem pretty puny.