Remember when websites used to measure traffic in hits? The results didn’t signify much of anything, of course, because every element on a page generated a hit. Page views came to be considered a better way of counting online traffic, but they couldn’t tell you anything about actual users. Enter the “unique visitor,” a measurement that appears to indicate how many different individuals visit a site, usually on a monthly basis. Sounds good, right? But how accurate is it?
“The web’s dirty little secret has been known for quite some time,” says a new report from Borrell Associates. “Unique visitors aren’t unique at all.”
Based on site surveys and what it calls “complicated math,” the study says the average local website’s count of unique visitors overstates the number of actual people visiting the site by at least three times. And the number of local people is overstated by a factor of 5.
The bottom line? The audience for local websites is “smaller, less local and less loyal than advertisers are being led to believe.” On average, the report says, about 30% of the visitors to a local website don’t live in the market. And about one-fourth of a local site’s page views are delivered to “fly-bys,” people who probably won’t return for another year, if ever.
The report says a site that claims half a million unique visitors would be more truthful if it told local advertisers that it reaches about 100,000 local people.
Sobering, isn’t it?
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Mayhaps, but, on the other hand, the number of visitors (be they unique or repeat) is often understated.