What makes a visit "unique"

[deronsizemore]

I know there are "visits" or "user sessions" where the session lasts by default 30 minutes. But what is considered a "unique visit" How often does it refresh? When the visitor clears cookies? Or is it by IP address? So something like if an IP address visits the site, leaves, and comes back 24 hours later this would count as another "unique visit"?

[Chris]

A daily unique is a unique IP address within 24 hours. It isn't perfect, people share IPs, but it is what we got.

A monthly unique is NOT daily uniques * 30 (that usually results in inflated numbers). It is an actual count of unique IPs in a month.

You could of course do a combination of UA, IP, & Cookies, but it still isn't perfect.

[deronsizemore]

Thanks!

[KLB]

Chris' suggestion of UA, IP & Cookies might give the best "uniques" data but as he said it isn't perfect.

Really getting monthly uniques is more wishful thinking than anything.

[Selkirk]

If you are using google analytics What's the difference between clicks, visits, unique visits, and unique visitors may help. GA uses UTM for tracking. If you are interested in some of the technical details, there is documentation on Visitor Identification methods.

[Mike]

It's a shame that Awstats doesn't count unique visits for their daily stats. I'm sure most people would want to see unique visits, rather than visits.

[deronsizemore]

It's a shame that Awstats doesn't count unique visits for their daily stats. I'm sure most people would want to see unique visits, rather than visits.

I don't know enough really to make an educated assessment of right and wrong with this topic, but here is a blog post about unique visits and visits.

http://www.omniture.com/blog/node/14

[KLB]

Google Analytics is probably the most comprehensive unique tracking method I know about but its Achilles heal is that it depends upon JavaScript and is loaded from a third-party server. This will result in an under counting of traffic do to users who don't support JavaScript or decide to block urchin via something like AdBlock.