What does 'unique visitor' mean in the context of Google Analytics on Android?

Question

I've got my android app reporting usage statistics to Google analytics, and everything seems pretty awesome, however my 'unique visitor' count is always wrong.

My account is reporting almost 30 unique visitors over the past month or so that I've been in development. The app is only installed on four devices. One of the devices is wi-fi only, and is not hooked up to a phone carrier or data plan.

So how is a 'unique visitor' defined? My current theory is that because I have uninstalled and installed the application on these devices a number of times, that each new install has become a 'unique' visitor, but I'd like to know if my theory is true or not before this gets launched in the app store. Is there some other reason my unique visitor count would be so high? Or possibly a common mistake I could be missing?

Answer 1

For websites GA tracking is done by dropping cookies. If you clear the google analytics tracking cookies associated with a site and then visit that site again, GA will treat it as a new visitor.

Not sure if Android Apps use this same technology. But if it does then it seems that uninstalling the app is clearing the cookies associated with it.

Answer 2

I have been pursuing this, trying through experimentation to find an answer.

Yesterday on Monday I had a reported 29 unique visitors from the previous week, with no activity on Saturday and Sunday. I very carefully performed four uninstall/installs and one 'refresh' (just installing/running the program without uninstalling it). I then removed the google analytics ID so that no more data could be sent. Analytics now reports that there were five visitors on Monday (in the graph that I click next to 'unique visitors') but a total of 35 Absolute Unique Visitors. Those numbers just don't add up.

I then realized that the date range in the top right hand corner was not the full range of time that my analytics account had been activive - but only a month. When I narrowed the date range to just the Monday, it accurately portrayed 5 absolute unique visitors. So my numbers were jumping around wildly as each day, the start date to my range changed.

So lessons learned:

• Installing your app results in a new unique visitor, even on the same device.
• Reported data is for the past 30 days by default. Play with the date range.
• A new installation of your app will only be acknowledged in analytics if your app sends the data. Double check as to when you are sending analytics data and if your app has had a chance to send data on each new install.