Traffic Analytics Trends And Metrics: A Complete Guide For Visitors Measurement
Traffic analysis helps measure your site's traffic and interactions through three key performance indicators (KPIs):
- Unique Visitors: Estimated total number of individual visitors tracked via a 2-year browser cookie
- Visits: Individual browsing sessions that last up to 30 minutes, reset at midnight
- Page Views: Total number of actual page requests, including password-protected and collection pages
Online web traffic graph
The Analytics panel allows you to:
- Filter data by date range (from January 2014)
- Compare KPI percentage changes
- Review traffic alerts
- View trends through an interactive line graph
Line graph with yellow rectangle
For Visit data, you can analyze breakdowns by:
- Device type (mobile, desktop, tablet)
- Traffic source (referral origins)
- Browser type
- Operating system
Index Page Views (version 7.0):
- Subpages accessed from main index count as index page views
- Direct subpage URL access counts as individual page views
Important Notes:
- Browser cookies track visits (30-minute duration) and unique visitors (2-year duration)
- Chrome's "Do Not Track" option may affect analytics accuracy by recording each page view as a new visitor
- Page view counts exclude image URLs, scripts, and error pages
- All browsing sessions reset at midnight
Use these metrics to understand your audience growth, track engagement, and make informed decisions about your website's performance and optimization strategies.
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