What's a Site Link Clickthrough

When inspecting the web, every time one clicks a link, a Clickthrough has been generated.

A Click through is the measure of the number of times a link or "H ref'ed" banner is clicked. MOA is able to measure the number of times visitors use most sections in our site to connect with companies and web sites via our popular M20 Vendors & Suppliers Links Section etc. 

Once click throughs are understood, there are only a few more concepts essential to understanding web statistics and reports. These are "hits", "page counts", "unique hosts", and true "visitor counts". So here is the full story:

Understanding "Hits" vs. Site Visitors, etc.

PAGE COUNTS

When you connect to an Internet web site you are requesting a specific web page, which results in one page count. 

However, when the site includes frames (like MOA's), each frame is a separate page and counts as such.

"HIT" COUNTS

"Hit" is by far the most frequently used number and perhaps the least useful.   A "Hit" occurs when you request a page each element on the page generate a hit count. If the page contains 20 images (elements) this page request produces 21 hits (20 hits for the images + 1 hit for the page itself).

Hit Count is most useful when measuring the number of times a given image or banner ad may be requested, but not nearly as useful when used to count the overall warm visitors a page has had unless certain adjustments are taken into count for each specific page being metered.

Many web-sites try to capitalize on reported "hit" count by generating as many hits as possible for each page request. In fact, as a user you'll see that your browser will make many connections to the server even though you have requested just one page.

While hit counts can have value, the downside to a page which requires lots hits is that you usually wait longer for it to load.

Note:  Unless you know how many hits a page requires just to be opened and make adjustments accordingly, the resulting "hit count" of that page  has little to do with the true number of visitors to the site.

UNIQUE HOSTS

When you make a request to an Internet server your request is tagged with a "unique host ID". This ID is an IP address (Internet Address) that represents the gateway connection you have used to connect with the Internet.

This gateway can identify a single computer (the no-sharing case) or it can identify a complete network (the shared-gateway case). Often when you connect to the Internet through Prodigy, AOL,  CompuServe, or many other large companies (such as GM or Lockheed, etc. ) your connection is represented using a single shared gateway address.

Thus, the same gateway ID that you present to the server is also the same ID that many others who share this gateway present.  In fact, there can be tens of thousands of users sharing the same "unique host ID" making this ID nearly useless in trying to determine how many users actually arrived from this gateway.

VISITOR COUNTS

Each visitor receives a unique ID no matter which gateway they arrived from or how many users share a given gateway.

This is the best and most accurate count of actual users to a web site. It provides a true and accurate visitor count - counting each live person as a single visitor.  Visitor Counts ignores the by products of this visit (i.e hit counts, page counts, etc.).

An increasing number of sites on the Internet provide this measure.  MOA and Fly-Guide are two of them.

For more details on the software engine that make this possible follow this link.