WANT TO KNOW HOW MEANINGLESS WEB PAGE HIT RATES CAN BE?

When we bloggers and other web site managers want to demonstrate the importance of our efforts, we usually cite the page views, or hit rates, that our page view counters return to us. I do it myself, but I always follow up by citing return visits to my blog and average length of stays. You can get a quick insight into what’s wrong with hit rates by looking at a sample of the returns I get from my Stat Counter for two of my blog entries.

The Stat Counter tells me that my most popular blog entry is one entitled “What is the impact of globalization upon politics?” But when I click on “recent visitor activity” for that page, here’s a fair sample of what I find.

Take a look at the line entitled “Visit length” for each entry – the length of time that each visitor stays. It’s mostly goose eggs. It turns out a lot of people do internet searches containing the words “impact”, “globalization” and “politics”. They hit my page, but most of them don’t stay to find out what I have to say.
A less popular page is entitled “Is Barack Obama the first 21st Century orator?” Here’s a fair sample of “recent visitor activity” for that one:

Compare “Visit length” for that entry with the other one. See my point?
Moral of the story: Take hit rate or page view claims with a grain of salt.

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