Visitors

Visitors

Noun (plural) · /ˈvɪzɪtəz/ · more than one person visiting a place or person; the collective presence of those who arrive temporarily

Definition

Visitors is the plural form of visitor — it refers to a group of people who have come to a place, person, or institution, each one present temporarily. The plural form shifts the focus from an individual arrival to a collective phenomenon: a museum welcoming visitors speaks of an audience; a website tracking visitors speaks of aggregate traffic; a country receiving visitors speaks of tourism. The word implies multiple purposeful arrivals and multiple departures.

Usage note

Visitors behaves like any regular English plural, formed by adding -s to visitor. However the word is notable for spanning both the physical and the digital: in web analytics, visitors means distinct users within a time period, distinct from visits (which counts sessions, not people). A single visitor can generate multiple visits. Confusing the two is one of the most common mistakes in analytics reporting.