Unique visitors

How many unique visitors?

[Adam5000]

I've published part of my website with more on the way. And people are going there to view the pages. And that's fine. No problem with that. And I'd like to get an idea of how many. And my question is, if two people go to the home page, how do I distinguish two people from the same person visiting twice. The same person twice is fine. There's no limit on how often a person can go to my site (and I like to think I have some regular visitors). But I'd like to get an idea of how many people are going there and distinguish between two visitors and one visitor twice.

[StoutFiles]

Google Analytics.

[cgrantski]

Sounds like you're going to need a lot of groundwork. I suggest the book Web Analytics Demystified, if your analytics package doesn't have adequate help screens.

[tonynoriega]

I second Google Analytics.

Unique Visitors = different people.
Visits = how many times those different people have visited your site.
Page Views = how many pages those unique visitors viewed during their visit.

at least that what mamma google tells me.

[arieng]

I agree with above comments. 'Web Analytics Demystified' is a great starting place. A couple of others I recommend are 'Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics' and 'Web Analytics An Hour a Day'. Any (or all) of these books will get you up and running pretty quickly.

Or just use the help section on Google's site. It's one of the best I've ever seen.

[cgrantski]

Then mamma google is wrong, gasp!

Unique visitors = unique Google Analytics cookies.

One human being can have more than one unique cookie if they use more than one computer or if they have deleted cookies and get a fresh one. And if their browser doesn't accept cookies at all, other things happen.

[tonynoriega]

technically yes. agreed. but c'mon... how many different computers do you actually log onto and browse the web? 1, 2 tops... one a work and one at home?

just becuase you have a different cookie doesnt mean your visitor trending is going to change. you are still either very likely or not likely to be a conversion.

[Adam5000]

Thanks to everyone who helped.