Data transfer is measured in bytes, the unit most computers use to represent a character such as a letter, number, or typographic symbol (such as k, 6, or !). Even characters you do not see, such as blank spaces and characters that make up HTML tags (<title>), are stored in a computer as bytes.

To make it easier to talk about large numbers of bytes, we use variations of the word byte.

1,000 bytes (B) = 1 kilobyte (KB)
1,000 kilobytes (KB) = 1 megabyte (MB)
1,000 megabytes (MB) = 1 gigabyte (GB)

Your data transfer usage represents the total amount of information downloaded from your web site, measured in megabytes. Here's an example:

Let's say you have a one-page web site. Your one web page is 20KB in size, or about 20,000 characters. This web page also contains a picture of your store. The size of this image is 30KB.

Add the two files together to determine the total amount of data transfer, or bandwidth, that would be required to view this page: 20KB + 30KB = 50KB of total bandwidth.

If your page is viewed 50 times on one day, your account will show 2,500KB, or 2.5MB of usage (50 views x 50KB = 2,500,000 bytes of data transfer).

Good news: Visitors referred to your site via Yahoo! do not count against your data transfer limit.

You can see your data transfer usage on the Site Status area on the Home and Manage tabs of your GeoCities Control Panel. If you're worried that you're nearing your limit, you can always buy additional data transfer.

Note: If you're a GeoShop or GeoPlus member, you do not have any data transfer limits and will not see your data transfer usage on your GeoCities Control Panel.