2 Reports - Different Totals

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  • updated
  • Not a bug
I created 2 CSV reports (default timezone, EST in my case). They both have the same exact settings except the time ranges:
Report #1 has time range from 08/01/2010 - 03/01/2013
Report #2 has time range from 10/01/2011 - 09/30/2012

After generating the report, I tally the totals for Report #1 using excel for the same time-range as Report #2:
Report #1 Total Visitors: 364148
Report #2 Total Visitors: 364149

How can this be? The only thing different between them is the time range.
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Michael
The difference appears because visitor is counted according to the date of his first request. So if a visitor requested one file on 09/30/2011 23:55 and second file on 10/01/2011 00:05, it will be counted for 09/30/2011 if you use the first date range, and for 10/01/2011 if you use the second range (as the first hit is filtered out in this case because of the chosen time range). As the result, number of visitors shown for 10/01/2011 will be different in these reports. However, the difference is usually quite small, e.g. in your case the numbers differ by one visitor only.