Title: Visitors
Author: bethurban
Published: July 8, 2025
Last modified: September 24, 2025

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 1. [User handbook](https://docs.parse.ly/user-handbook/)
 2. [Measuring and reporting performance](https://docs.parse.ly/user-handbook/measuring-reporting-performance/)
 3. [Understanding Parse.ly calculations](https://docs.parse.ly/user-handbook/measuring-reporting-performance/calculations/)
 4. Visitors

#  Visitors

Measuring by visitors looks at unique individuals who come to your site. The easiest
way to think about the difference between visitor and [page view](https://docs.parse.ly/measuring-reporting-performance/calculations/page-views/)
metrics is that a single visitor could view three pages — this results in 1 visitor
and 3 page views. The ratio of visitors to page views indicates how many pages people
look at on average.

Parse.ly distinguishes visitors between two groups: [new visitors and returning visitors](https://docs.parse.ly/measuring-reporting-performance/calculations/visitors/new-returning/).
These are separated by checking if a visitor has visited your site in the previous
30 days (on the same device and without clearing cookies). If they have, they qualify
as “returning;” if not, they are “new.”

## Use cases

 * Similar to page views, total visitors still focuses on volume and reach. However,
   it can normalize comparing a post or section that may intentionally drive up 
   page views — for example, comparing a slideshow post to a single-page, text-based
   post.
 * If you are trying to reach a new audience, launching a new initiative, or trying
   to grow your audience, measuring by new visitors gives a good indication of success.
 * If you want to build [audience habits](https://blog.parse.ly/post/8452/reader-loyalty-data-shows-more-sessions-per-visitor-from-social-more-views-per-session-from-search/),
   increasing loyalty of an audience or customers, make returning visitors a key
   metric focus.

## Pitfalls

 * Most visitor data that Parse.ly collects will be for anonymous users. Parse.ly
   relies on first-party cookies, using the user’s browser and some estimations 
   to provide visitor data in real time. Certain things can affect the accuracy 
   of the visitor metric, such as: If cookies aren’t used on your site, users don’t
   accept cookies through their browsers, or a user visits your site on multiple
   devices or browsers.
 * The “[hotel problem](https://docs.parse.ly/measuring-reporting-performance/calculations/visitors/hotel-problem/)”
   is a universal web analytics problem. Because of this, you cannot export visitor
   information and aggregate it outside the [Parse.ly Dashboard](https://docs.parse.ly/dashboard/).

**Pro Tip**

If you need to process visitor information differently, [Parse.ly’s Data Pipeline](https://docs.parse.ly/data-pipeline/)
is recommended.

Last updated: September 24, 2025