What is an unique visitor?

What is an unique visitor?

Traditional analytics tools recognise visitors with a cookie or another identifier, so a person who comes back several times is counted only once in the reporting period.

Cookieless tools cannot recognise returning people, because that would require tracking them. They estimate visitors in another way, for example by counting visits that arrive directly or through an external referrer.

Why Unique visitor matters

• It tells you how many different people reach your site.
• It is the base for rates such as conversion rate.
• Growth in visitors shows whether your reach is expanding.

Practical tips

• Use the same definition when you compare periods or tools.
• Do not compare visitor numbers from a cookie-based tool with a cookieless one one-to-one.
• Track visitors by source to see which channels bring new people.

Unique visitor in Noralytic

In Noralytic a visitor is a page load that comes directly or through an external referrer. Internal navigation is not counted as a new visitor. This is privacy-friendly and gives reliable trends, but it cannot identify people returning on another day.