Back to the Main Newsletter Page

In this edition of Web Enlightenment we'll be talking about why I hate the word hits and my hope that you'll stop using it.

This newsletter focuses on giving you practical, interesting insights into how to successfully use technology as a tool to improve the way you do business. Bridging the gap between knowledge and understanding that all entrepreneurs have will help you make money online.

Please hit reply and tell me what words drive you bongos, I answer every email sent to me. Replies will be featured in a future issue of this newsletter.

All the best,

I Hate Hits
and other foolish words

There are words that bother all of us - sometimes it is a simple matter of preference, sometimes it's about where you were raised - but we all have words that we think are just awful.

In searching the web to prepare for writing this article (yes, there is an actual small bit of research that goes into writing web enlightenment) I came across a gaggle of fascinating words that bother people, here are a few that stood out as universally lousy:

Fantabulous, pus, mucus, sutured, polyps, abscess, scab, maggot, larva, and phlegm.

These are the sort of words that make people cringe whenever they see them, the kind of thing that can just ruin an otherwise lovely article, a word that feels like finding a worm in your dessert.

That's how I feel about the word Hits - a word I think we should all commit to never ever use again.

Right about here many of you are getting confused - you've probably seen this word all over the place , even used in seemingly decent newspapers and you can't understand why I would hate an innocent little word like hits.

My friends you have been fooled, you have misunderstood the meaning of the word hits and its historical significance.

Back in ancient web times (the early 1990's) when each web page was individually carved on stone tablets before they were programmed into "the computer" - no, no, I'm just kidding on the stone tablet thing, but it did sort of feel like that. In the long long ago we began to develop systems and software to help us understand what was going on at websites, this was the very beginning of web site analysis, what we call web site statistics today.

Compared to what we have today the systems and software were incredibly crude, remember that this was a time when everyone "dialed up", when Netscape was new, and when very few people on planet earth knew what LOL stood for.

The first web site analysis systems were based upon log files and we were pretty proud of ourselves to be able to count the number of requests made to a server - and we started calling that number hits.

Hits is a measure of object requests - a "hit" is not a visitor to a web site, but a "hit" on the server. A hit can be a graphic, the html file itself, a java applet - anything really. So if a site has 54 small graphics on a page, every visitor to the page registers as 55 hits (the graphics plus the html file).

Like all computer systems, web analysis progressed rapidly and left the dark ages long ago - but some people continued to use the word hits , especially people that purposefully intended to fool others.

"Our website gets 85,000 hits a month" they'd say.
"Impressive" would reply the person they were trying to sell advertising to.
"How many visitors to your site?" asks the pimply geek in the corner
"about 1,500" says the dejected sales guy, revealing that the 85,000 number is a pure con.

We used to tell people that if anyone trying to sell you something used the words "hits" you should respond in the same way you would when a used car salesman told you the vehicle was owned by a grandma who only drove it to the grocery store once a week. You should run.

And for awhile the deceptive word hits sort of disappeared - and people forgot all about the incredibly important distinction between the word "hits" and visitors.

But recently ignorant people have started using the word again - I won't point fingers (or links in this case) but will simply say that a major New York newspaper that tends to capture the "times" of our day - they inappropriately used the word twice last month.

Ohhh how it made me cringe, and yes of course I immediately fired off an irate letter filled with a ranting diatribe about my pure refined hatred for the word hits.

So here in web enlightenment I beseech you, my loyal readers, to vow to never use this horrible word again. You are not required to correct someone at a cocktail party the way I always do, but consider yourself strongly encouraged to perform that wonderful optional community service. If you have the chance, Educate someone about the ancient history of the word hits and why we must not use it anymore.

Speaking of Speaking...

The Internet Educator is pleased to announce a visit to Rapid City South Dakota. I've been invited to give a presentation on "Profitability Principles of Web Revenue Streams" by my friends at Agency Management Roundtable.

Agency Management Roundtable (AMR) is a management consulting business that specializes in helping owners of small- and medium-sized marketing communication companies (less than 30 employees) move up to their next performance level—and keep improving.

Their clients include advertising agencies, graphic design and public relations firms, media service firms and interactive agencies. AMR programs are geared to agency owners, senior managers and their account service people.