I've been often asked what is the better score of a website's traffic.  I prefer VISITs to HITs.  Anyone can come to a website and "hit" it often, asking for pages and rocketing up the "hit count."

As our web host tries to explain below, a "Visit" is when a specific person comes to our website and stays a while roaming the pages, still rocketing up the "hit count," but still only one person, one visit.

To average 134 unique visits per month in 2004 and an average of 270 unique visits per month in 2005, I'd say we are doing something right. 

Thanks for helping us spread the word about Arts & Crafts in Maine!!

Hits represent the total number of requests made to the server during the given month.

Visits occur when some remote site makes a request for a page on your server for the first time.

As long as the same site keeps making requests within a given timeout period, they will all be considered part of the same Visit.

If the site makes a request to your server, and the length of time since the last request is greater than the specified timeout period, a new Visit is started and counted, and the sequence repeats. Since only pages will trigger a visit, remotes sites that link to graphic and other non- page URLs will not be counted in the visit totals, reducing the number of false visits.