[Zope] what constitutes number of hits?

[Jules]

On Thu, Feb 03, 2000 at 11:47:15AM +0800, kdie wrote:
|hi all,
|this maybe a basic Q, or even a FAQ.  but here goes...
|
|what does it mean when someone say:
|"my site has X number of hits daily" ?
|
|is it the number of daily requests?  the number of pages requested?  please
|enlighten me, or pint me to the right direction.

'Hits' as a reporting tool is like trying to estimate the code efficiency
of a programmer based on how many lines of code (s)he writes in a day. Or
trying to figure out the bandwidth of a 747 hauling CDROMs.

If you have a page (1 hit) with a masthead graphic (2 hits) and a nice
graphic bullet (3 hits) for each of your bulleted text items, you'll
register three hits each time that page is loaded. If you add a 50mb
MPEG movie to the page, that's just one more hit. So, to me, it's kind
of silly measurement.

Tools like WebTrends (http://www.WebTrends.com) track user sessions,
page views, bandwidth, most popular pages, etc., which are slightly
better metrics in my opinion. Of course these tools don't tell you how
people might struggle with your site's navigation or any non-HTTP error
problems they're having. So unless you actively seek and act on feedback
from your users, they still mean very little.

Ok, I'll get off my soapbox now!

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Jules