More Visits than Page Views

How is this possible?

[kgoeres]

Hi! I'm new to the forums, so I'm not sure if this has been covered. Is it possible to have more visitors than page views? I thought that each visitor must see at least one page. If the page doesn't load...is that counted as a visit still. I'm just a little confused. Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

[digitalghost]

How are you tracking visits? If you're counting "hits" then it is quite easy to get more "visits' than page views.

Say your index page has 10 graphics and links to a css, one visitor hits your index page, and that counts for 12 "hits".

Need to know a little more about what software you're using.

[jm_uk]

You can get a visit with no page views if the file that is requested by the visitor is not classed as a page by your analytics package.

If it's possible with your analytics package, try and find out which files were requested in the visits that had no page views.

[creative craig]

Theres always the chance that some blighter is linking to your images directly off of your server, you will need to scan the logs to find out if this is happening!

Craig

[sugarkane]

If your stats package counts unique IP addresses as 'visitors', a single AOL user can rack up a different IP for every request on the page (ie one for each graphic, stylesheet etc) because of the caching system AOL use, which can lead to skewed stats.

[kgoeres]

Hi! Thanks for your thoughts. I'm using WebTrends. And it's actually "visitor sessions" rather than visitors. According to Web Trends, a new visitor session is counted if the user has been idle longer than 30 minutes and if the user returns, it's a new visitor session. It tracks unique visitors seperately. I have 3000 more visits than page views. I'm still confused. I contacted the company and they are looking into it for me. Thanks again.