I have a small site just started in June, when I ask other people about their site, they will say they get XXX hits as the measurement.

Last month I had 1000 visitors, around 900 were unique and over 52,000 hits, 17,000 page views

What is the rule of thumb ? hits or visitors or pageviews ? and more importantly does Google Ad sense pay on hits or visitors ?

Many thanks

Unique visitors is what counts. I'm pretty sure AdSense pays per unique visitor in a 24h-interval. But would be happy if someone could shed some light on this since I'm not 100%.

Adsense pays for page "impressions" and clicks. Impressions being the page being opened and the advert exposed to the visitor and a higher amount for an actual click on the advert.

Adsense pays for page "impressions" and clicks. Impressions being the page being opened and the advert exposed to the visitor and a higher amount for an actual click on the advert.

So I am clear Impressions are the same as hits ? so what are clicks ? same same as hits ?

Adsense pays for page "impressions" and clicks. Impressions being the page being opened and the advert exposed to the visitor and a higher amount for an actual click on the advert.

So I am clear Impressions are the same as hits ? so what are clicks ? same same as hits ?

clicks are when someone actually clicks on the advert and follows the link to another site to possibly purchase something.

one is seeing/reading the other is doing something about it.

An adsense report would read something like.........

impressions = 1000 clicks = 6

the page was opened/viewed 1000 times and the ad dispalyed was followed 6 times.

A 'hit' is one action by the webserver. For example if you have a html page with three photos on it, the webserver must return four responses when someone loads that page. Your website logs would register this as four hits and one page view.

Hits are basically a useless measurement, especially when comparing between sites. The number of page views and unique IPs are much better indicators of traffic.