Google Analytics Changed Visits to Sessions, Unique Visitors to Users

We have seen update in Google Analytics few days back, thought we should share our views on these changes. Google Analytics has now changed visits to Sessions, Unique Visitors to Users. Change is the law of nature as well as products and development. Many website owners was always left in confusion with terms visits and unique visitors.

Let me explain to the users who are confused in Visits and Unique Visitors. Visits are calculated for the sessions every time a visitor visit any web page upto 30 minutes is calculated 1 visit. After 30 minutes a visit session is expired.

Visits : Visit is a session for a user visits any website. Every time a user comes to your site, it is a visit, unless it is within the 30 minutes (as mentioned for GA) of his last visit. Now Visit is changed as Sessions

Visitor : Every time a user comes to your site, it is known as visitor.

Unique Visitor :  Unique visitor fact is hard to understand. Unique visitor is calculated on the basis of  __utma cookie. _utma cookie contains unique visitor identifier numbers. If user deletes the __utma cookie or changes the browser, user is identified as unique visitor. Now Unique Visitors are changed as Users.

Google Universal Analytics
Google Universal Analytics

To avoid these confusion Google Analytics changed Visits as Session and Unique Visitors to users. We will discuss bounce rate, page views and other related terms in next posts. Please feel free to share your views on these changes.