Does hotlinking count a 1 unique visitor?

Not sure is this is the correct forum, but I have a stupid noob question about hotlinking. If someone hotlinks to something hosted on my site, and someone clicks it, will that count as 1 unique visitor on my site or do they have to actually land on my page?

Reason I ask is I am new to all this. I had some MP3's I had on a site I abandoned and I am getting a lot of unique visitors on the site. I think what has happened is a few have found the mp3's and hotlinked to them on MySpace type sites and such. I'm not sure if these "uniques" are people clicking on the hotlinks, or people who have seen the hotlinked mp3 and are visiting my site looking for more.

 

I got the same doubt... anyone can help us clarify please..

 

I think that this would count as a hit, but not as a unique. But, someone wiser will come and confirm this.

 

I think it depends on what you are using to track your stats.

 

I'm using Awstats

 

It would probably show as a hit, but not unique. I have not used awstats, but I remember someone talking about it somewhere.

 

It does not count as a visitor.
In AWStats there is a section that shows Links. If you click on show all, you will be able to identify hotlinks since there will be no entry in the pages column.

I am getting hotlinked a lot but I am having fun with those guys as a payback (see my signature).
You can block them by simple modifications of your
.htaccess files.
Somewhere I have found an article that showed how to enable hotlinking for users that link back to your site.
Since I am getting hotlinked heavily, I will simply redirect them to a gif with a url. There I will explain that all they have to do is provide a link on that page.
I think this would be a great way to grow my traffic instead of just shutting everyone out.

 

Is there a way to add custom stuff to the hotlinking panel in Bluehost? I like that they have an auto hotlink feature, but like an earlier poster said, it'd be nice not to completely shut them out.

Although most people just steal my photos and post them in irrelevant forums that probably wouldn't care for my site anyhow.

 

I had a school teacher post a hot linked photo from one of my sites in a course proposal she wrote.

It is interesting to follow them sometimes.