# 'Hits' miss the mark

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2002/07/10/039hits039-miss-mark/
- Published: 2002-07-10T23:00:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

Don’t fall for ill-informed Web sites that encourage charities to part with their
cash.
We’ve just received yet another e-mail message encouraging charities to sign
up to another charity information site, and to pay for the privilege. This one told
us that their site had already had several thousand “hits.”

Many charity Web managers will already know that this term is spurious. A “hit” 
is simply a request for a file on a Web site. This file could be a Web page, a graphic,
a Javascript, a Flash file or almost any other type of file. So, one visit to just
the front page of UK Fundraising notches up around 20 hits: each graphic and script
on this page is included as a hit. Yet only one page has been viewed.

Would you be impressed if we told you that UK Fundraising had received 4.5 million
hits in the first six months of this year? We hope you wouldn’t. What you should
really ask is how many pages were viewed on the site, how many unique visitors used
the site, how many user sessions occurred on the site, how many registered users
we have, and so on.

## Advertisement

 [⌊Posthub advert. You create the campaign. We'll handle the postal journey. Get started at post-hub.co.uk.⌉](https://fundraising.co.uk/ads/posthub-20261007-300x250/)

So, next time you hear someone crowing about the number of hits their Web site gets,
smile and delete their e-mail message.

 * **[Charity chiefs call for 10% payroll giving top-up to continue](https://fundraising.co.uk/2002/07/10/charity-chiefs-call-10-payroll-giving-topup-continue/)**(
   10 July 2002)
 * **[NCVO calls for publication of PIU report](https://fundraising.co.uk/2002/07/10/ncvo-calls-publication-piu-report/)**(
   10 July 2002)
 * **[Shelter to take online direct debits](https://fundraising.co.uk/2002/07/10/shelter-take-online-direct-debits/)**(
   10 July 2002)