What are hit-counters?

Answer 1

Most web sites have a counter that keeps track of how many people have logged into the site...how many "hits" the site has taken. All those ads and pop ups that you see are sold by the web site based on how many people see them, and the hit counter tells the story. It isn't much per hit but it adds up when your site gets a half million hits a day.

A hit counter measures and displays the number of times visitors have viewed a single page on a website. Hit counters are typically displayed on homepages. Hit counters can be public or non-public. If they are non-public, or 'invisible', only the webmaster can see how many times the page has been viewed. Technically, hit counters measure requests sent by a visitor's browser to a server. Each time a visitor's browser requests to see a page on your site, this request is relayed through your server, and is called a hit.