Unique hits

Unique hits are an approximate count of distinct visitors in a 24-hour window. Total hits count every page load, including refreshes. Unique hits try not to.

Unique hits are on paid plans. Legacy free accounts ignore the unique-hits widget parameter.

What we store

We do not store a visitor ID. Each request builds a one-way hash from the site, a truncated user agent, the Cloudflare edge IP, the current date, and a salt that rotates every 12 hours. The hash is not reversible. It resets at midnight UTC.

The per-page unique hits (the number on a path row) include the path in that hash. Sessions and journeys use a hash without the path, so one person browsing several pages still looks like one visitor that day.

Country is looked up from the IP and then the IP is discarded.

What it is not

It is not a cookie, a fingerprint, or a person who comes back next week. Same human, next day, new hash. Two browsers, two hashes. A shared office NAT can collapse several people into one.

Bots and obvious automation are filtered before they count.

Turning it on

Unique hits show on Overview once unique tracking is enabled for the site. The hit counter widget can show unique hits with ?hits=unique.

More on the hashes is in how we handle visitor data.