Unique Visitors Vs Visits

Forum|Forum|8 months ago
June 11, 2025
3 replies
762 views

I've created a free form table, my dimension is marketing channel and my metric is visits the number comes up as 111,567 . However, if I were to add in unique visitors to the same table with the same date range, my visits changes to 156,283. Is there a reasoning for this change?

I saw that @jennifer_dungan had answered a question similar to this but, I'm not sure if there was any reference to the date range.

From answered the post, it says that visit number is based on All time data, but I'm confused if that would supercede the date range I have selected. Does adding unique visitors add more users to the data pool for visits to pull from?

Thanks in advance!

Analytics

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Jennifer_Dungan

Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

Hi,

I am not sure what post you are referring to, but "Visit Number" and "Visits" are very different things...

"Visit Number" is a dimension that increases on every visit (i.e. Visit 1 > Visit 2 > Visit 3 ... Visit 757, etc.)

"Visits" is a metric that will show the number of Visits that occurred within the time frame.

Now, when it comes to Marketing Channels, which have a default 30 day attribution, having higher Visits is absolutely expected... since the same "visitor" is likely to have come to the site multiple times....

Marketing Channels defer preference to "specific" channels, basically meaning that "direct traffic" to the site will not override a more specific and targeted channel in the time frame. If direct overwrote this, there would be no "30 day attribution" as every visit would be reset to a new channel....

Let's look at an example from a single visitor:

Visit 1 - Direct

Page 1
- Marketing Channel set to "direct"
- Marketing Channel Instance triggered
Page 2
- Marketing Channel retains value "direct"
- Marketing Channel Instance not triggered, as the MC was not explicitly set

Visit 2 - Organic Search (2 Days Later)

Page 1
- Marketing Channel set to "organic search" (this is a new specific channel, therefore it will overwrite)
- Marketing Channel Instance triggered
Page 2
- Marketing Channel retains value "organic search"
- Marketing Channel Instance not triggered, as the MC was not explicitly set

Visit 3 - Direct (7 Days Later)

Page 1
- Marketing Channel retains value "organic search" (direct will not override this)
- Marketing Channel Instance not triggered
Page 2
- Marketing Channel retains value "organic search"
- Marketing Channel Instance not triggered, as the MC was not explicitly set

All of this traffic is from one single visitor... but in total they had 3 visits... 1 visit will be considered "direct", 2 visits will be considered "organic search" (even though the last visit was direct, the 30 day attribution takes precedence)

Jennifer_Dungan

Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

Sorry, I mis-read that the Unique Visitors added more Visits.. but I don't understand what you mean....

Are you using a segment? Segment Scope could be the factor here... If you are just adding UVs as a metric column on your table, Visits should be unaffected...

I think we need more information about what your report is doing.