Urgh… so I’m wandering around the web, reading one of the conservative blogs I check and I run across a piece taking CNN to task about daily visitor statistics.

Short version, CNN is counting actual humans who visit a site while tools like Sitemeter (click the little rainbow box at left) only count visits. I can be responsible for many visits a day, but I’m still only one visitor. Most tracking tools try to use a window in which subsequent hits are part of the same visit. For example, say the visit window is 30 minutes. As long as the next time I come to a page on FatMixx is within 30 minutes, it’s counted as the same visit. If I come to the site, then hit another page in 35 minutes, that counts as a new visit. To make it even more confusing, if I read the site at 4:45 PM at work, then come home and read the site at 5:10 PM on my computer here, that’s two visits (most of these tools use a cookie to track this behavior, which is inherently browser specific). All of these different visits, though, are caused by one visitor, me.

We deal with this distinction at work all the time (I work at ESPN.com) and use survey-based numbers as part of our ad pricing. While I don’t know if we deal with the company in the CNN story, we do deal with a couple of others that are reputable. The numbers CNN cites seem reasonable to me.

It’s funny to think that people would complain about those numbers. Traditional independent media has so much trouble reaching that many people. There are shows on cable networks that would LOVE to get 85,000 people to check the show every day. Think about this, too… most of these blogs, if they follow normal internet traffic behavior, are drawing these visitors during the work day. ESPN2’s afternoon ratings might not even match that type of “traffic.” (yeah, I just made that up )

Super Short version: just remember

hits > page views > visits > visitors when measuring web site traffic over any unit of time.