What's the difference between visits, visitors and page views?
19 September 2026 · by Nordva, who make Nordva Launch
The short answer
A page view is one page loaded. A visit is one arrival at your site, which can include many page views. A visitor is one person (or rather one browser), who can make many visits. So page views are highest, visits in the middle, visitors lowest. Use visits for what your channels bring, visitors for how many people you reach, and page views for which pages get read.
An example
Ana finds your site through a search on Monday and reads three pages. On Thursday she comes back from a newsletter link and reads two more.
- Page views: 5 (every page she loaded).
- Visits: 2 (Monday and Thursday; each started with an arrival).
- Visitors: 1 (Ana, if your analytics can recognise her browser on Thursday).
Why visitors are the hardest to count
Counting a visitor means recognising the same browser on a later visit, usually with a small identifier stored in a first-party cookie. That isn’t always possible or allowed:
- Some visitors block cookies or use private browsing.
- In some places, and with some tracking settings, a site may only store an identifier after the visitor agrees.
- The same person on a phone and a laptop counts as two visitors.
So “visitors” is often an estimate, and a good tool says so. Visits and page views can be counted without recognising anyone.
Which one for which question
- “Did my post bring people?” Visits, by source, over the days after you posted.
- “How many people have seen the product?” Visitors, knowing it’s an estimate.
- “Which pages do people read?” Page views, by page.
- “Do people come back?” Returning visitors, which needs an identifier.
- “Are people finding what they want?” Page views per visit and time on a page, next to signups.
A mistake to avoid
Don’t compare numbers across tools and expect them to match. If you run two analytics tools side by side, expect their totals to differ and pick one as the reference. Each tool defines a visit a little differently (how long a pause ends one, what counts as an arrival) and handles bots and blockers differently. Compare a number with itself over time.
With Nordva Launch
Launch’s analytics script counts visits and page views for every visitor, and visitors where your tracking mode allows an identifier (marked as an estimate otherwise), with the source of each visit. Web analytics is on every plan, up to 10,000 events a month on Free.
When Launch is the wrong tool
If you need to watch what individual visitors click (session recordings, heatmaps), none of these numbers will show it; use a tool built for that.
- What's the difference between sessions and users in analytics?
- Why do visitors and visits not match?
- What counts as a unique visitor?