What Is the Difference Between Hits and Visits?

Hits and visits are not the same thing — and confusing the two can give you a very misleading impression of how popular a website really is.

Many years ago, companies would proudly quote the number of “hits” their website had received. It was often the largest number shown in their website statistics, so it sounded impressive. Unfortunately, hits are one of the least useful measurements of website popularity. Website analytics has changed considerably since the early days of the internet, and modern analytics platforms use much more meaningful measurements. Hits, visits, users and page views: what’s the difference?

Hits, visits, users and page views: what’s the difference?

The important point is that these figures measure different things. A single visitor can generate several visits, many page views and potentially hundreds of hits. This is why the number of hits a website receives should not be used as a measure of how many people have visited it.

What is a hit?

A hit is a request made to a web server for a file or resource. It does not mean that a person has visited your website.

For example, imagine a web page contains:

• The HTML page itself
• Five photographs
• Three CSS files
• Two JavaScript files
• Several other images, fonts or other resources

Loading that one page could result in many separate requests to the server. Depending on how the website is built and how resources are delivered or cached, a single page view could therefore generate dozens of server requests. Each of those requests may be counted as a hit.

This is why quoting “we had 10,000 hits” tells you very little about how many people actually visited the website.

Hits are therefore not a reliable measure of website popularity.

The number can vary enormously depending on how a page is constructed, how many resources it contains, caching, browsers and other technical factors.

What is a visit?

A visit, commonly called a session in modern analytics systems, represents a period of interaction with a website. A visitor might arrive at your website, look at several pages and then leave. Depending on the analytics system being used, this activity can be recorded as one session.

For example:

One person → visits your website → views five pages → leaves

That is broadly one visit/session, but it may generate many page views and considerably more server requests.

A visit is therefore much more useful than a hit when trying to understand how people are using a website.

However, a visit is not the same as a unique visitor. The same person can visit your website several times.

What is a unique visitor?

A unique visitor is an attempt to estimate how many individual users accessed a website during a particular period. Modern analytics systems generally refer to this as users, although the exact definition varies between analytics platforms. It is important to understand that analytics cannot necessarily identify a real human being with absolute certainty.

A person might use:

• A desktop computer at work
• A laptop at home
• A mobile phone
• A tablet

Depending on the analytics system and its configuration, these may be counted as different users. Similarly, several people using the same computer or device may sometimes be counted as one user. Cookies, browser information, consent settings and other technologies can also affect how users are identified. An IP address alone is not a reliable way of identifying a unique visitor.

This is an important correction to the way website statistics were often explained in the early days of the web.

What are page views?

A page view is recorded when a page is viewed or loaded. If one visitor looks at five different pages, that could result in:

1 user → 1 session → 5 page views

If the same person comes back the following day and views another three pages, the figures could become:

1 user → 2 sessions → 8 page views

Page views can therefore tell you considerably more about how much content people are consuming than the number of hits.

What are views per visit?

Views per visit is a simple way of looking at how many pages were viewed during a session.

For example:

• 100 sessions
• 300 page views

would give an average of: 3 page views per session

This can provide an indication of how deeply visitors are exploring a website, although it should not automatically be interpreted as a measure of how interesting or successful the site is. A visitor who finds exactly what they need on the first page may be a very successful visit, even though they viewed only one page.

So which figure matters?

It depends on what you are trying to measure. For most websites, hits are largely irrelevant as a measure of popularity.

More useful measurements can include:

• Users
• Sessions
• Page views
• Engagement
• Traffic sources
• Landing pages
• Exit pages
• Conversions
• Enquiries
• Downloads
• Purchases
• Newsletter registrations
• Form submissions

For a business website, the most important measurement may ultimately be neither hits nor visits. It may be what the visitor actually does. A website receiving 1,000 visitors that produces 50 genuine enquiries could be considerably more successful than one receiving 10,000 visitors but producing only five.

Website statistics are estimates, not absolute numbers

It is also important not to treat website analytics as a perfect measurement of reality. Different analytics systems can produce different results because they use different methods of collecting and processing data.

Modern websites also have to take account of:

• Cookie consent
• Browser privacy settings
• Ad blockers
• Tracking prevention
• JavaScript being disabled
• Cached pages
• Mobile and desktop devices
• Different analytics configurations
• Bots and automated traffic

Consequently, there is no single number that represents the exact number of human beings who visited a website. Analytics is best used to identify patterns and trends rather than pretending that every figure is an exact count.

Not every visitor is a human being

There is another important consideration. Not every request made to a website comes from a person sitting in front of a computer. Websites are constantly accessed by automated systems, including:

• Search-engine crawlers
• AI crawlers
• Security scanners
• Monitoring services
• Link checkers
• Performance monitoring systems
• Other automated software

These requests can appear in server logs and, depending on how the analytics system works, some automated activity can also affect reported statistics. Good analytics and server-analysis systems attempt to identify and filter unwanted automated traffic, but no measurement system should be assumed to be perfect.

Hits vs visits — the simple explanation

The easiest way to remember the difference is:

A hit is a request for a resource from a web server.

A visit or session is a period of interaction with a website.

A page view is a page being viewed or loaded.

A user is an analytics system’s estimate of an individual user.

These are four very different measurements.

Don’t be impressed by a large number of hits

If someone tells you their website has received hundreds of thousands or even millions of “hits”, ask what they actually mean. The number may sound impressive, but it could simply represent requests for all the individual files and resources needed to display their web pages.

Hits do not tell you how many people visited your website.

For understanding website performance, look instead at the people visiting, how they found you, what they viewed, what they did and — most importantly for a business — whether they completed the action you wanted them to take.

The number of hits may make a good headline. It does not necessarily make a good measurement.

FAQ section

What is a hit on a website?

A hit is a request made to a web server for a file or resource. A single page view can generate multiple requests, so hits do not represent the number of people visiting a website.

What is a visit to a website?

A visit, commonly called a session in modern analytics, is a period during which a user interacts with a website. One session can include multiple page views and other interactions.

Are website hits the same as visitors?

No. A hit is a request for a website resource, while a visitor is an individual user identified by an analytics system. A single visitor can generate many hits during one visit.

What Is the Difference Between Hits and Visits?

Visits or sessions are much more useful than hits for understanding website activity. For a business, however, enquiries, sales, downloads and other meaningful actions can be more important than either figure.

• Author: Steve Sankey / PrePress. Originally published January 10, 2014 · Updated September 7, 2026