Latest Traffic Stats and Information

I agree with all that stats are complicated. I host a site in spanish for Natural Families. The stats counter explains the confusing labels as follows:
* Total Visitors: total number of hits or visits. Some counters count once for the same IP adress, some count for each time you reload the page. I don't know if counts "anonymous" hits.
* Unique visitors: visitors who HAD NOT VISITED IN THE LAST # days. Ranges vary from counter to counter.
* First time visitors: visitors who HAD NEVER VISITED the page before.
* Returning visitors: visitors who return to the site after # hours from their last visit.

I guess the number that should concern us is the RETURNING VISITORS, as this means we have a recurrent afluency of visitors. I don't know how much members MA has, but seems to me that the number of returning visitors is too small compared to total, so maybe the only recurrent visitors are ourselves! (sob!)
Other ideas that pop into my mind...
* peak hours are great times for greeters to show up, or to place a temporary poster/board outside the Academy... to catch attention of simple wanderers.
* Visitors last 15 days are only useful to measure success for particular events.

Pfft, i cant stand these quizes ;)

Well another option... seen by the big numbers even in the unique and returning. I should assume this are mouse clicks too (argh, there goes my former theory out of the window :S ).

So i guess then there should have been a 4th column with "unknown" representing a group of visitors that had their ip-specs blocked (firewall perhaps?)...

Well anyhow, if anyone ever finds out let me know ;)

i think the red is mouse clicks, the green and blue are ip-addresses

Dear Elb,

This stats are very unclear. But i think its like this:

i think that what you see in the red color is the amount of hits (not the amount of visitors, but the amount mouse clicks) as a total.

By that total there were a group of newcomers (unique ip addresses) and a returning regulars (known ip-addresses). All their clicks together made a total of page-views, and that probably will be the red stat.

Im not completely sure, but anyone having a better explanation, don't hold back.

Greetz,

Dansz

Actually I am not sure I understand them fully. The trends - busiest times, days of the week etc are obvious - but I am struggling with the total - shown in red, then the unique in green and returning in blue. Does unique mean that each of those ppl visited only once on that day - or that they had never visited before (ie were new entirely to the MA campus). Similarly does returning refer to ppl who revisit MA twice or more on the same day or who have visited on previous occasions. And where does the total come from? Because if you add the unique and the returning together you do not come up with the same number as the total. There is a large shortfall between the number obtained by adding together the unique and the returning and the number in total. What category of visitor are these?