How Loomduct counts visitors

Most analytics tools recognize a visitor with a cookie. Loomduct does not use cookies, so it recognizes a visitor in another way.

A daily hash

For each event, Loomduct computes a hash of:

• the visitor's IP address,
• the browser's user agent,
• a random salt that is new every day, for each of your projects.

The result is the visitor id. The same browser on the same day gets the same id, so its visits and page views add up to one visitor.

The salt is deleted 4 hours after its day ends. After that, nobody, not even Loomduct, can find out which IP address an old id came from. Each project has its own salt, so one browser has different ids on different sites.

The IP address is used only for this hash and to find the location. It is never stored.

What this means for your numbers

• A visitor is recognized for one day. The same person is a new visitor the next day. A visit that crosses midnight (UTC) stays one visit, for up to 4 hours.
• A new IP address is a new visitor. Open tabs keep their visitor, but a tab opened after a switch from Wi-Fi to mobile data counts as a new visitor.
• A shared IP address can merge people. People in one office with the same browser version can count as one visitor.
• Private windows count as the same visitor as a normal window of the same browser, because the IP address and browser match.

To follow people across days and devices, identify your users when they sign in.