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.

2008 Months / Hits / Visits

    January:         19463     1492
    February:       11919        870
    March:            23992     1947
    April:               20756     1890
    May:                28985     2437
    June:               33010     1833
    July:                 96647     3034
    August:           19605     1752
    September:    18154     1551
    October:          22560     2257
    November:      23828     2325
    December:     25776      2466


2007 Months / Hits / Visits

    January:        21357     1867
    February:      16063     1556
    March:           23992     1947
    April:              20756     1890
    May:               25907     1838
    June:              28669     2378
    July:                62604     3301
    August:           22068     2209
    September:    20948     2097
    October:          24672    2068
    November:     19551     1819
    December:     13733     1478

2006 Months / Hits / Visits

    January:         11430       641
    February:       13260       608
    March:            13657       840
    April:               10427       719
    May:                10006       773
    June:               17441     1035
    July:                 48208     1641
    August:           15244        967
    September:    13652     1315
    October:          20080     1633
    November:      18997     1406
    December:      16025     1758

2005 Months / Hits / Visits

    January:        3196      215
    February:      2155      221
    March:           1820     196
    April:              2864     254
    May:               1403     167
    June:              2968     282
    July:                4485     264
    August:           2595     222
    September:    7247     288
    October:         5644     357
    November:     8489     375
    December:     9826     405