Visits, hits, caching and counting on the World Wide Web: old wine in new bottles?

Explores the problems of “counting” hits and visits to Web sites on the World Wide Web. Nominally, cyberspace offers unrivalled monitoring and tracking potential when compared with other marketing media. However, further inspection reveals some complicating factors. Identifies the phenomenon of cache memory, the use of proxy servers and trawler software and explores their influence on under‐ and over‐counting. Drawing on the hierarchy of effects model developed by Berthon et al. (1996), presents a series of correction factors. Concludes that the problem of accurate counting on the Web is a new manifestation of an old problem: old wine in new bottles.