There are two types of people who visit your website: those who have never been there before, and those who have. This is the New User metric in Google Analytics.
Jeff Rajeck, Senior Trainer at ClickAcademy Asia, explains what the New User Metric really means on Google Analytics.
Users are visitors who have initiated one session with your website or app within a specified period of time. New users are users who have never been to your website and returning users have visited your site before.
When someone views your website, Google looks for a cookie on their device which is unique to the browser the visitor is using:
If the cookie is not present, Google creates one and considers this a ‘new’ user
If the cookie is present, Google considers this a ‘returning’ user and starts a new session
However, the data from GA is not 100% reliable and will not really tell you everything you need. For example, if a visitor accesses your site from multiple devices (for example, a laptop first and a smartphone later), GA will count visits from each device as coming from a different user.
Therefore, when it comes to users, your GA data will always be somewhat skewed because of reasons such as different devices, browsers, and privacy settings and options.
Get hands-on guided training on Google Analytics at ClickAcademy Asia's Google Analytics Certification. The 3-day course covers topics from basic setup and configuration to advanced tracking features. Find out more here.
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