Hit

What Does Hit Mean?

A hit, in the context of Web servers, is a particular page request command that seeks access to a record on a Web server. Hits are a method of monitoring the traffic on a specific website. The more hits (or requests), the more traffic is thought to be visiting the page. This method of measuring traffic on a website can be useful as well as misleading in some cases.

Techopedia Explains Hit

A hit is a call for Web-based files such as HTML, JavaScript, images and other formats from the server. While a page is being browsed, it can ask for any number of hits, depending on the items placed on the page. A single page is not necessarily a single hit to the Web server log. This hit count is used by many traffic monitoring servers all over the Internet.

Advertising agencies often maximize their hit count by putting up GIF-type graffiti which sends hundreds of thousands of hits at the same time, hence creating a false impression of high traffic.