In order for those logs to be read, they have to be run through the server's Web log analyzer. This analysis is usually set up to be run at some regular interval, usually daily, and at a time when the server is doing little else, such as in the wee hours of the morning. Referrers are those tidbits of info that let you know where a visitor was when they 'clicked through' to your site. When you are making a concerted effort to generate traffic to your site with the search engines, referrer statistics will tell you what's working and what's not. These kinds of statistics are called 'page views'.
Page views show just what pages visitors have hit and how many times they've been hit.
With this kind of data, you might be inspired to revise your navigation strategy to encourage more surfing within your site. Don't confuse page views with 'hits'. In Web log terms, 'hits' refer to how many objects on any one page have been requested by a visitor's Web browser. If your Web browser visits a page, it requests the HTML page and also any objects, such as images, sound files or other embedded objects that that page calls on. If your opening page calls on three objects including itself, the Web server will log three hits, but only log one 'page view'.