Google Analytics - Visitors Overview

The Visitors Overview is the first tab/link/option in Google Analytics. It is a very basic report; most of the data within it is presented on the Dashboard. There are, however, three additional metrics to the Dashboard: Absolute Unique Visitors, and the Technical Profile which provides a short Browsers list, as well as the top five connection speeds.

Absolute Unique Visitors

This is a slightly different metric than Visits. If a person visits your website for the first time, they are tracked as a Unique Visitor, and their Visit is recorded. However, if they return later (from the same computer, where a cookie resides), their visit is again recorded, but they are not a new unique visitor, so that number doesn't increase. That is why the Unique Visitors metric will always be lower than the Visits. In the case of forums and other community site, the number will be significantly lower, as the same people will visit many times.

Browser List

This is the top five non version-specific browsers to your site.

This isn't normally the most critical report, but can be useful when you're testing your website to make sure it 'works' in all the browsers visiting your site. You can click 'view full report' to see a larger list, and even drill down further on each to see version numbers.

Connection Speeds

I'm not entirely sure how they generate this report. It could be based on the load time of the script, it could be based on a lookup of the user's ISP. Either way, you can see the top five connection speeds of visitors to your site:

Clicking 'view full report' will take you to a larger list. This will be handy in designing your site, and ensuring that the images, scripts, flash files etc, will all load in a sufficiently fast time for your user profile.

And that's the Visitors Overview!