cPanel provides several statistics tools. They all read the same web server logs, so they are counting the same thing in different ways.
The terms
- Hits – every file requested. One page with thirty images is thirty-one hits. This number is large and means very little.
- Pages – requests for actual pages rather than images and stylesheets. More useful.
- Visits – a series of requests from the same visitor within a time window.
- Unique visitors – distinct addresses. Treat as an estimate; several people behind one office connection look like one visitor, and one person on a train can look like several.
The single most important thing to know
Server statistics count everything, including bots. Search engine crawlers, monitoring services, security scanners and scrapers all appear as traffic. On a small site, bots are frequently the majority of what you see.
That is why the visitor numbers in cPanel are usually much higher than those in Google Analytics. Neither is wrong: server statistics count every request, while Analytics runs JavaScript in a real browser and so counts something much closer to actual people.
Which to trust
For understanding your audience, use Analytics. For understanding load on the server – why the account is busy, what is consuming resources – use the server statistics, because bots consume resources exactly as people do.
Bandwidth
Also counts everything, including bots and any large files being downloaded repeatedly. If bandwidth is unexpectedly high, look at which files are being requested before assuming your site has become popular.
