Understanding Unique Hit Tracking

What are Unique Hits?

Unique hits refer to individual visits to your website. Unlike total hits, which count all page views including repeat visits, unique hits estimate the number of different visitors or sessions your site encounters on a page-by-page basis.

How We Track Unique Hits

Our system for tracking unique hits prioritizes privacy while maintaining visitor anonymity. Here’s the process:

• Anonymous Data Collection: Each time a page is accessed, we collect:

  • The URL of the page
  • General browser information
  • Cloudflare request data (never including the visitor’s actual IP)

• Creation of Unique Hashes: We combine this data with the current date and a frequently changing “salt” to generate a unique hash.

• Hash Privacy: This hash is one-way, meaning the original visitor data cannot be retrieved from it.

• Salt Rotation: The salt changes every 12 hours, ensuring no long-term tracking of individuals.

Privacy and Security Measures

• No personal data or IP addresses are stored.
• Only Cloudflare’s IP addresses are used for tracking.
• The 12-hour rotation of the salt prevents any possibility of long-term visitor tracking.
• Our one-way hashing ensures that no personal visit data can be reconstructed.

What This Means for You

• Gain insights into your site’s unique visitor count without compromising privacy.
• Unique hit counts provide useful analytics, although they are an approximation.
• Our commitment to privacy standards remains strong with this feature.

Important Considerations

• Unique hits are calculated within 12-hour periods or when there’s a change in the incoming IP address from Cloudflare.
• This tracking method balances analytics utility with privacy protection.