Traffic statistics provide essential insight regarding the potential success or failure, of a website or marketing campaign.

Whether using Google Analytics or another service, to understand traffic statistics, one first must know the definition of the terms used for web and ad statistics.

Understanding the key terms, and how each interrelates, provides clarity regarding how the campaign is performing, and what steps to take moving forward for the greatest return-on-investment.

Unique Visits vs. Total Hits

Unique Visits express the number of unique computers/users that have visited the website or page. Each user often has a unique IP Address; often this corresponds directly to a computer used to visit that page.

Total Hits express an aggregate total of website visits, whether the unique visitor has been to the site once, or has returned five different times; each hit counts towards the Total Hits.

• When a computer goes to the website, that computer's information is logged into the statistics database, and counted as one unique visit.
• If the user o . . .