Key Terms in Traffic Analysis

It is important that you check your website stats to gauge whether your promotional efforts pay off. Traffic analysis is an essential factor in web management. It gives you relevant insights on where your visitors are coming from and how many your visitors are. Without knowledge of your traffic stat, you will not be able to perform advertising and promotional strategies basically because you won’t have a basis.

Terms Associated with Traffic Analysis:

To better understand the process of traffic analysis, it is important that we get familiar with words associated with it. Getting familiar with these words will decrease the chances of miscommunication.

• Unique Visitors



To identify your site’s unique visitor, the IP addresses are used. Each unique IP address that browsed or visited your site is your unique visitor. However, there are some cases where visitors’ details are sent through proxy servers, causing them to appear like they are of the same IP addresses.

• Referrer



Referrer is basically the page that links to a specific web site. This is composed of all your inbound links. These are the sites that have listed your site on their own pages. They are called referrer primarily because they refer visitors to your own site. They recommend your site to their own visitors.

• Hit



Hit refers to a request on your server. When a user clicks on a particular page, he is generating hits for that page. Hit includes HTML files, images and other date on the page requested.

• Page Views



Page Views refer to the number of times a particular page is visited or opened. Page view includes both the unique and repeated visitors of that page.

• Visitor



Visitor refers to the persons or individuals who have visited your site. In its statistics, repeated visitors are included in the counting.

• Paths



Paths refer to the way that visitors take in navigating a particular site. Paths give you the idea and insight about the navigability of your site. It tells you if your visitors are having a hard time browsing within the site or if they find browsing comfortable.

These terms are vitally important when you actually start analyzing you traffic stats. Once you get to the idea of your site’s stats, it will be easier for you to iron out your promotional campaigns. These key terms are useful as you endeavor on traffic analysis.

If you want to find out more about your site’s traffic please see our Tracking and Analysis Services or contact our Web Marketing Specialists.