All accurately stated. I'd add that Sitemeter's "Visits" = your "Unique Visitors" and Sitemeter's "Page Views" = your "Visits."

SM Visits, seem to be the commonest measure, and are prominently featured on SM. NZB's Ecosystem also uses (used?) them. They are the closest you can get to answering "how many people?"

Not that I doubt the wisdom of the Commissar, but are you sure about that (regarding SM)? For example, 250,000 "unique visitors" in 8 months is a lot of godnabitt "unique visitors." It seems a tough figure, even with the Captain's WSJ mention and various Instalanches ... (sorry to use you as the example Captain)

I've never attained more than 12,000 "visits" in a single day on my best Instalanche, for example (when he left the post at the top ogf the page for an afternoon), and I'd put the number of unique visits at maybe 9,500 for that same total.

Having "page views" count as "visits" seems off to me - page views is a rather straightforward descriptive term. Is there a sitemeter FAQ page?

Again, I'm sure that you are probably right, just seems COUNTERintuitive to me ...

get it? Counter? Ah, nevermind.

No problem using me as an example -- at this point in life, I'd be happy to wind up as a warning to others. :-) And thanks for the congratulations.

I use the Sitemeter stats because it's sort of the "common currency" of the blogosphere rather than any special affection for it. From my understanding, "visits" means hits from IP addresses that are unique within a calendar day. Page views are multiple hits from the same IP address, multiple page views during the same "visit", that sort of thing. I have stats available from Hosting Matters, which provides the server and thus has access to better information, and they actually split unique visitors from the number of visits, and then page views is another statistic.

Since I switched to HM (my current visits include my days at Typepad), I have had 189,372 visits from 85,264 unique visitors. But even that may be a little misleading, as "unique" IPs are calculated on a monthly basis, not an overall basis. Last month, according to HM, I had 80,879 visits from 35,861 unique visitors, which generated 138,569 page views.

Yikes!

And truthfully, Sitemeter undercounts. Sitemeter's stats for April were around 72,000 visits and 95,000 pageviews. I notice that Sitemeter doesn't always load on the page. I've considered dropping it just because of the drag on site loading, but HM doesn't give me up-to-the-moment or hourly stats. Besides, like I said earlier, it's the common unit of measure for the blogosphere, so why mess with it?

Sorry for the long comment, but with the numbers moving up, it's a topic that's been on my mind, too. Hope you don't mind! And thanks again for all your kind words.

Mind? Thanks!

Once again though - when you compare numbers of Sitemeter "visits" vs. HM "visits," those seem to more or less line up ...

72,000 vs. 80,879 (because sitemeter undercounts, as you said)

That would indicate to me that visits are visits are visits ...

I think when comparing across stat platforms, visits are probably the equivalent currency, unless I am misinterpreting your numbers ...

I can see how the unique visitors thing is misleading, mine calculates on a monthly basis as well. My host (verve) does allow up to the second stats, however.

I think i'll just stick with my server stats.