What is a Unique Visitor?

A unique visitor is an individual user who visits a website within a specific time period, distinguished from others by a unique identifier. Unique visitors are only counted once per time period, regardless of how many times they visit the website.

For example, if you were looking at the number of unique visitors over the past thirty days and "Jane Doe" visited your website 10 times, she'd only be counted as one unique visitor.

This metric is different from total visitors, which simply counts the total number of visits a website receives, including both new and returning visitors.

How are unique visitors identified?

When a visitor arrives at a website, web analytics tools identify unique visitors with unique identifiers like cookies, IP addresses, and user agents. These unique identifiers help distinguish the visitor in future sessions, allowing the tool to recognize if the visitor is returning or new.

Given the privacy concerns associated with cookies, GoodMetrics uses IP addresses combined with other browser characteristics to produce a unique identifier. This allows for cookieless attribution and all the benefits that come with it.