Have you ever thought of why we track unique visitors and what difference it makes? We currently track our stats via statcounter, sitemeter, and woopra (which I removed recently due to slowing the site down), and because of this, realized a discrepancy from each statistics program in reporting our visitors and page views. Obviously without truly knowing, your left flying blind when someone wants to advertise on your site or working with a PR company, and you have to divulge website particulars. Each program we use all state on their sites that they are fairly accurate. I can honestly say we have had some days with a 500 visitor difference from one stat counter to the next, so someone is wrong. Or are they?
I have spent some time today researching stats and what is considered unique and why we even count uniques vs. page views vs hits vs overall visitors.
First, let me talk about what each one of these items are:
- Hits: Hits are anytime something is loaded on the page they are assigned hits. Lets say a blog has 50 photos on it…each photo downloading when the page loads is a “hit” so your hits would go up by 50 when the page loads. In short, hits are content.
- Page Views: Page views are each time a page loads. This counts when back buttons are used, forward buttons, reloads, all of it. One person can generate multiple page views in one visit to the site. Each loading page equals one page view.
- Uniques: Unique Visitors are visitors that visit your site in a specified amount of time. Some sites count people as new every 1/2 hour and some count them as new only after 30 days. Blogs in general use from 3, 6, 12, or 24 hours for a unique visitor.
There seems to be no true online article that states when a visitor should be considered a unique visitor. One thing that makes a ton of sense to me, is that uniques can be a false sense of your conversion rate online. Lets say you sell products and reach 100 uniques a day and 25 return visitors in a 24 hour period, so 125 visitors total come to your site. And you put up 2 products in the morning and 2 in the evening that those 25 returning visitors are exposed to later on in the day. Should they not be considered uniques since you can essentially “sell” those visitors again? Some say yes.
Same idea, as a blog, if you publish new content several times a day and people return to read your new content, should they be considered new readers if they are reading new content? Or should they not count until they return the next day? And if they are not counted until a new day, do blogs with content only once a day have the upper hand? Or should they never count again since you have already exposed your blog to them and they will never be ‘new’ again, regardless of length of time upon returning.
Its true that knowing how many people are visiting and returning can be a valuable resource. You can find out what keywords are coming through from search engines, which one of your articles are popular, and if other sites are recommending you. It can also help you if you are advertising to know where your efforts are succeeding.
I once took a class in college regarding statistics. Well, I actually took two. The premise is…stats are pointless. You can manipulate statistics in almost any avenue you want.
One of the major problems in stat counting is that if cookies are disabled on a visitor and they search your site 100 times in a day, they can be counted as 100 “uniques”. And online services like AOL generate a new IP every time a user surfs, therefore if you have AOL users and they come to your site multiple times in the day, they will always be a counted a new person, even if they are not. 10 AOL users can reek havoc on your site under your “unique” listings if they spend time coming in and out. Also in the blog world, contests can skew your amount of true readers. While contests can bring in a significant amount of traffic, much it is a direct entry into a contest and then back out again. Its up to you to take that contest entry and turn it into a true visitor, and in a lot of cases, that is an impossible feat with no related link or blog to go back to.
Many analysis’s discount uniques all together and say that it doesn’t matter how many visitors you receive, but how long they stick around. If you have 100 visitors and 90 of them only stay for 0-5 seconds, you will not reach your audience regardless of how many come by. If your users are coming in and bailing, then you an always look to see what is ‘unfriendly’ about your main pages. Unfortunately, in websites like blogs, all the content is on the main pages in most cases, therefore you wont see your visitor moving around creating as many page views for you. And you wont know what is turning them off…colors, articles, bad layout…you will just have to blindly test items to see if you notice an improvement.
My conclusion is that it doesn’t really matter. Unless you are moving into the several hundred thousand uniques and millions of page views, the difference between 500 blog visitors and 1500 blog visitors is very little. The types of reviews and advertisers you will receive in this range is about the same and as long as you are supplying a steady range of quality content, you will reach your target audience.
Focus on creating a community, getting to know your visitors as people, and most of all, have a good time. By surrounding yourself with friends, rather then “statistics”, you will realize the importance of them, truly, is very little.
~Trisha
This is the most informative, plain language explanation that I’ve seen. It really makes sense, and I learned about so much valuable information, including the different statistical counter sites. I’ve been asked for my stats before for the various product reviews I do, but now I know why and what the companies are looking for. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much for this information. It is so helpful. I’m wondering what “number” makes your site “credible”? Is it 500+ hits a day or more or less?
Courtney
http://www.womenlivingwell.org
I’ve used both of those that you’ve mentioned above, but not woopra. A tool that has worked much better for me is “gostats”. Gostats is just more accurate and gives more information. Rather than just unique hits and pagviews, I can see more points such as sessions and unique IPs. It seems to be the one that most PR people trust.
Quite honestly, no matter how many people may be visiting my blog on any given day, I’m more interested in having them comment so I can get to know them. Two commenting visitors a day to me has more value than 100 non-commenting visitors a day. Because if people are commenting, I can interact with them. And, in my opinion, that’s what blogging is about.
@ Jennifer Kyrnin:
Jennifer, thankyou for your take on the whole thing. I went to your page to leave you a comment, but I am unsure if it went through. It may have went to moderation.
sincerely,
trisha
The reason that there is no concrete definition of what a “unique” user or visitor is because there is no truly accurate way to track that. The problem is that cookies can be blocked, browser caches can be cleared, and honestly, even the same browser on the same computer can be used by more than one person.
So what you need to do is decide what constitutes a “unique” visitor for your business, and adjust your stats to count that. Or conversely, find out what your stats program considers unique so that you know exactly what you’re tracking.
The most common method of tracking a unique visitor is to cookie them, track the IP, and then count how many times that cookie on that IP comes to your site in a specific period – usually a 24 hour period from like midnight to 11:59pm.
That means, that if you’re browsing a website in the turnover point, you could be counted as 2 uniques – because your IP and cookie were on the site in 2 periods. Even though your visit was consecutive.
As for whether it matters or not, well, it’s often a case of your goals. If you make more money when more people come to your site, then increasing unique visitors could be very valuable. As my MBA professor used to say “you get what you measure.” In other words, if you don’t know what’s happening because you’re not measuring it, you won’t be able to improve in that area.
Jennifer Kyrnin’s last blog post..SEO Reports – Tables for layout affect your SEO efforts
Thank you for breaking this down. I was pondering unique visitors while blow-drying my hair just yesterday morning. (Haha!) It was confusing to me, too.
Mommy Cracked’s last blog post..I’m Beat.
great article. Thanks for taking the time to research and write it!
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I would think that the TOTAL visitors would be a better gauge for potential advertisers. Doesn’t it say more about the quality of your site if people keep returning, no matter what the frequency? A unique visitor may have happened across your blog in a search engine and never return. Someone who returns, even hours later obviously values your content and is more likely to take a recommendation from you, contribute and build the community. When I get asked for unique visitors I usually give them both the total and the uniques.
But like you said, does it really matter? I guess it all depends upon your goals for your blog.