Just wanted to check. Are page impressions the same as hits?

Just wanted to check. Are page impressions the same as hits?

No - a page impression is a single page served by the server, including all the content on that page. A hit is when the server serves something, and is usually a much higher incidence than page impressions because most pages require multiple hits to get pictures and other content linked or embedded within the page.

A page view (PV) or page impression is a request to load a single page of an Internet site. On the World Wide Web a page request would result from a web surfer clicking on a link on another HTML page pointing to the page in question. This should be contrasted with a hit, which refers to a request for a file from a web server. There may therefore be many hits per page view since a page can be made up of multiple files.

 

These page views may be counted as part of web analytics. For the owner of the site this information can be useful to see if any change in the page (such as the information or the way it is presented) results in more visits. If there are any advertisements on the page, the advertisers would also be interested in the number of page views to determine their expected revenue from the ads. For this reason it is a term that is used widely for Internet based marketing and advertising.

 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_view

hehe - sourcing from wiki.

 

!b has it right, page loads are what a visitor sees, hits is what the server loads.

 

Hits... How Idiots Track Success (although page loads by themselves are pretty meaningless too.)