How Sawmill counts Visitors

User Guide IndexAn Overview of SawmillReportsFiltersUnderstanding the Reports

The Visitor Totals

Question: When I add up the number of visitors on each day on the month, and I compare it to the total visitors for the month, they're not equal. Why not? Also, why doesn't the sum of visitors on subpages/subdirectories add up to the total for the directory, and why don't the sum of visitors on subdomains add up to the total for the domain, etc.?

Answer: "Visitors" in Sawmill's terminology refers to unique visitors (see What does Sawmill measure?). So:

• The total hits in a month is equal to the sum of the hits on the days of the month
• the total bandwidth for a month is equal to the sum of the bandwidth on the days of the month
• the total page views for a month is equal to the sum of the page views for each day of the month

BUT

• The total number of visitors in a month is not usually equal to the sum of the visitors on the days of the month

Here's why. Suppose you have a web site where only one person ever visits it, but that person visits it every day. For every day of the month, you will have a single visitor but for the month you will have a single visitor as well, because visitors are unique visitors, and there was only one visitor in the entire month.

If what you're really looking for is "visits" rather than "visitors" (so each visit will count once, even if it's the same visitor coming back over and over), then that's what Sawmill calls "sessions," and you can get information about them in The Session Overview and How Sawmill calculates Sessions.