Happy new year! For our first post of 2007, we'd like to add clarity to the difference between two reports that you are probably already using.retains . If you're trying to explain the difference between these reports to your colleagues, read on.Absolute Unique Visitors New vs. Returning Absolute Unique Visitors : User A will be counted as a First Time (New) Unique Visitor on May 5th, and User B will be counted as Prior (Returning) Unique Visitor. User A and User B will not be counted as a Unique Visitor (either first time or prior) for any subsequent visits (May 12 and 17th).New vs. Returning : The visit on May 5th from User A gets counted as a visit from a "New" visitor. Subsequent visits from User A (May 12 and 17th) get counted as visits from a "returning" visitor. All of User B's visits are counted as visits from a returning visitor.Absolute Unique Visitor report counts visitors to your website (counting each visitor only once in the selected date range) whereas New vs. Returning classifies all visits (sessions) in the date range by the visitor type. The new visitor number may seem especially large if you are looking at a large date range, or if you have just recently installed Analytics on your site.What's the difference between clicks, visits, unique visits, and unique visitors? glossary of terms .Posted by Gauri Deshmukh, Google Analytics Team
