Visits By Day
The visits-by-day chart draws one data point per calendar day across your selected date range. A second lighter series shows the equivalent prior period so you can compare trend and direction at a glance.
How the chart is built
The chart fetches the accepted page view count for each day in your selected range and plots them in sequence. Days with zero visits — weekends on a B2B site, for example — appear as a zero bar or flat line rather than being skipped. The chart always spans exactly the number of days in your range, from the first day on the left to the last on the right.
The dates shown in the chart header are the first and last calendar days of the selected range in UTC. If you select "last 7 days" on a Monday, the header will show the date of last Tuesday on the left and yesterday on the right. Today is excluded from "last 7 days" because the day is not yet complete.
If you apply an event filter using the metric pill row — switching from Page views to a specific event type — the chart reruns for that event type. The Y axis rescales to fit the new data. The prior-period series also updates to show the prior-period count for the same event type.
The prior-period overlay
The lighter second series on the chart represents the period immediately before your selected range, aligned day for day. If your range is the last 7 days, the prior period is the 7 days before that. Day one of this range sits above day one of the prior window. This alignment makes it easy to see whether a mid-week dip or weekend spike is a recurring pattern or something new.
The prior-period series is always the same length as the current range. It uses the same event filter as the main series. If you do not want to see the prior period, there is no toggle to hide it — it is always displayed as a reference. You can mentally ignore it by focusing on the solid area.
The two series may not reach the same Y scale. The Y axis is anchored to the tallest day in the current range. If the prior period had a day that significantly exceeded the current maximum, the prior-period line will extend beyond the top of the chart frame. This is expected behaviour, not an error.
Reading peaks and troughs
A spike on a single day is worth investigating if it does not align with a campaign or a product launch you remember. Check the Referrers card for that day's range — switching to a custom range for that one day will show you where the spike came from. An unexpected spike that comes mostly from one unfamiliar referrer host may be crawler traffic that was not caught by the bot filter.
A sustained trough — several days of lower traffic compared to the prior period — is a better signal of a real change than a single low day. Compare the pages card and referrers card between the two periods to see which page groups or sources have dropped.
What the chart does not tell you
The chart does not show hourly breakdown. The smallest granularity on the board is one calendar day in UTC. If you need to know whether traffic spiked in the morning or the evening, the board cannot answer that question. The 15-minute live tile is the only sub-day indicator.
The chart also does not show a breakdown by page, referrer, or country over time. The ranked tables below the chart show the overall distribution for the full selected range — not how that distribution changed day by day. Each day in the chart represents the total across all pages, all referrers, and all countries.
Chart and quota bar together
Directly below the chart is the quota bar, which shows the fraction of your monthly cap consumed so far this cycle. The quota bar is not tied to the date range selector — it always reflects the full billing cycle, not just the range shown in the chart. If your range is "last 7 days" and your cycle started three weeks ago, the quota bar includes all three weeks of counted visits, not just the last seven days.
If the quota bar is at 100% and the chart shows recent days with zero visits, soft-stopping is in effect. Beacons are being sent by the script but are not being counted. The chart will resume filling once the next cycle starts. The filter-impact panel will show quota drops for those silent days.
Troubleshooting
If the chart is blank even though the metric tiles show a non-zero count, check the date range — a very narrow range such as a single day with exactly zero visits on that day will draw a flat line. Widen the range to confirm.
If the prior-period line is absent, check that your account has data from before the selected range. A brand-new installation will have no prior-period data and the second series will be empty.