Website hits off the charts

[dmdar]

Hi, something amazing! I have a website dedicated to Christ, www.heavenandfreedom.com . I just checked and it is now reporting over 300,000 hits from all over the world! This may be incorrect, something wrong with the system, but it is possible this is correct! I have contacted them and asked them to have a look. It is reporting over 63,000 hits from the United States alone, 22,000 hits from China alone, over 111,000 hits from Europe alone!

 

[bdavidc]

Hi, something amazing! I have a website dedicated to Christ, www.heavenandfreedom.com . I just checked and it is now reporting over 300,000 hits from all over the world! This may be incorrect, something wrong with the system, but it is possible this is correct! I have contacted them and asked them to have a look. It is reporting over 63,000 hits from the United States alone, 22,000 hits from China alone, over 111,000 hits from Europe alone!

300,000 hits would certainly be a lot of traffic, but traffic does not tell us whether a website is biblically sound. A site can receive massive attention and still teach serious error.

I looked through heavenandfreedom.com, and while there is some sound material there, I also found teachings that go beyond Scripture, especially the claims of private revelations from God, being taught directly through voices and impressions, “releasing angels,” angel appearances, dreams, and prophetic words.

Those things need to be tested very carefully. Scripture says, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1). The Holy Spirit will never contradict the written Word of God, and Christians are never instructed in Scripture to release angels or treat personal impressions as divine revelation.

So whether the site has 3,000 visitors or 300,000 visitors is not really the important question. The important question is whether what is being taught agrees with Scripture. “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

Until the analytics show otherwise, I would assume a good portion of that traffic is automated rather than 22,000 actual readers in China. The numbers themselves really do not prove that thousands of real people are reading the site.

 

[Angelina]

Hi, something amazing! I have a website dedicated to Christ, www.heavenandfreedom.com . I just checked and it is now reporting over 300,000 hits from all over the world! This may be incorrect, something wrong with the system, but it is possible this is correct! I have contacted them and asked them to have a look. It is reporting over 63,000 hits from the United States alone, 22,000 hits from China alone, over 111,000 hits from Europe alone!

A “hit” can be generated every time the website server is asked for a file. One person visiting a single page can generate several hits because the page may contain images, scripts, fonts and other elements that are each requested separately. Hits can also include automated activity such as search-engine crawlers and other bots.

It would be more useful to know what the report shows for unique visitors, users, sessions or pageviews. Those measurements give a much better indication of how many actual people are reaching the site. Google, for example, distinguishes between users, sessions, and pageviews because they measure different things.

So the 300,000 figure may well be completely accurate as a measure of website activity, and the numbers from the US, China, and Europe may also be accurate. We just can't assume from those figures that 300,000 individual people are visiting the site every day.