Learn analytics
Visitors vs visits vs pageviews
Understand the difference between website visitors, visits and pageviews.
What it is
Visitors, visits and pageviews are three related measures of website traffic. Visitors count distinct privacy-safe visitor identifiers, visits group activity into sessions, and pageviews count recorded pageview events.
Why use it
Use these metrics together to separate audience size from repeat sessions and the amount of page activity inside those sessions.
Before you start
- Use one site and one date range throughout the comparison. Changing either changes the population being measured.
Unique visitorsrepresents measured anonymous identifiers, not a list of known people or customer accounts.
How to use it
- 1
Read unique visitors
Unique visitorscounts the distinct visitor identifiers present in the selected reporting range after known-bot traffic is excluded. Use it as the closest measure of audience size in that context.Product screenshot placeholderDashboard - Traffic metrics
Capture focus: Unique visitors, total visits and total pageviews
1Unique visitors2Total visits3Total pageviewsReplace this slot with the matching production surface and numbered callouts before publishing. - 2
Read total visits
Total visitscounts sessions. One visitor can start more than one visit, so visits can be higher than visitors when people return or begin a new session. - 3
Read total pageviews
Total pageviewscounts recorded pageview events. A single visit can contain several pageviews when someone moves through more than one page or revisits a page. - 4
Compare the three ratios
Compare visits with visitors to understand repeat session activity. Compare pageviews with visits through
Views per visitto understand the average number of pageviews generated by a session. - 5
What to expect
The metrics answer different questions
Visitors answer how many distinct anonymous visitors were measured. Visits answer how many sessions occurred. Pageviews answer how much page-loading activity those sessions created.
Known bots are excluded, not every anomaly
Premely removes activity classified as a known bot. Suspicious or unknown activity is not automatically equivalent to a confirmed bot, so investigate unusual patterns with supporting reports.
Useful ways to apply this
More visits but stable visitors
This can indicate more repeat sessions from a similar audience. Check sources, pages and conversions to see whether those returns were useful.
More pageviews but stable visits
This means each session produced more page activity on average. Use engagement and page reports to decide whether that reflects exploration or friction.