How does Optimole count the number of visits?

Each visitor to your site is counted as a unique daily user, regardless of their actions (how many images they download or how many pages they visit) or how often they return on the same day.

🔍 How can you check it?

You can access the analytics on the Optimole Dashboard, which displays the total number of visits. Upon logging in to the Optimole page, you'll find visitor-related metrics, along with date range filters to help you follow the metrics closely.

Always use the date range filter to select the period you want to review. The dashboard shows visits for the selected range only, and the displayed total resets at the start of each new billing cycle. When comparing usage across different periods, make sure the selected date range matches the timeframe you are investigating.

If you monitor the visits to your website with Google Analytics - data might be similar in some cases; however, for accurate data, we recommend you check your server logs and count the unique IP + user data (your hosting provider can guide you more on how to find those).

Our plans all have generous allowances for visits according to their tier.

• Free plans can optimize images for 2**,000** monthly visits before needing a paid plan.
• Starter plan can optimize images for 48,000 monthly visits.
• Business plans can optimize images starting from 120,000 monthly visits.

📝 Note: Find out more about the pricing plans here.

📊 Reading dashboard statistics after a quota email

If you receive a quota warning or plan-limit email and then check the dashboard but see a low visit count, the numbers are not necessarily wrong. The most common reasons for this apparent discrepancy are:

• Billing-cycle reset — Optimole's visit counter resets to zero at the start of each new billing period. If the reset occurred between when the quota email was sent and when you checked the dashboard, the current chart will show only visits from the new period.
• Date range mismatch — The dashboard defaults to the current billing period. If the quota email referred to a previous billing period that has since reset, the data from that period is no longer available in the dashboard — the date range filter is limited to the active billing cycle. To investigate a spike that occurred in a previous billing period, use your hosting provider's server or CDN access logs (see the checklist below).
• Plan announcements vs. account changes — general product announcements (such as plan-limit updates) apply to all accounts and are not personalized notifications about your specific usage. Your individual plan limits remain as set on your subscription.

To verify the usage that triggered a quota email, open the Optimole Dashboard. If the billing period covered by the email is still the active cycle, use the date range filter and compare the numeric visit total shown. If the billing cycle has already reset, that period's data is no longer visible in the dashboard — request server or CDN access logs from your hosting provider instead.

📝 Note: The numeric visit total shown in the dashboard is the authoritative figure for quota purposes — not the visual height of the chart bars. See Visits based plan for details on how automatic upgrades work when quota thresholds are reached.

📉 Why per-site charts may look inconsistent

If you manage multiple websites under the same Optimole account, the visit charts for each site may appear visually inconsistent — one site's bars may look much taller or shorter than another's, even when the actual visit counts are similar.

This is because each per-site chart scales automatically to fit the traffic volume for that individual site. A bar that appears small on a high-traffic site may represent more visits than a tall bar on a low-traffic site.

Do not compare chart bar heights across sites. Instead, rely on the numeric visit totals displayed alongside the charts and use the date range filter to select the same period for each site when making comparisons.

📅 When does my monthly quota reset?

Your visit quota resets on your account's subscription renewal date, not on the first day of the calendar month. For example, if your subscription renews on the 15th of the month, your quota resets on the 15th of each month.

To find your exact reset date:

1. Log in to the Optimole Dashboard.
2. Navigate to your account or subscription details to check your renewal date.

If you cannot find your reset date, contact Optimole support and they can confirm the exact date for your account.

📝 Note: If you are approaching your monthly visit quota, see What happens if I exceed plan limits? to understand how Optimole handles overages and automatic upgrades.

💡 What are the benefits of counting visits?

• Counting visits is a simpler way to show how Optimole uses its resources.
• Finding the right pricing plan is easier, and you won’t face any miscalculations.
• You can freely use more images and larger sizes without concerns about running out of optimization capacity or bandwidth. We believe this measurement will give you more confidence to make changes to your site without worrying about optimizations and bandwidth.
• There are no penalties for having visitors stay on your site for a longer duration.
• It’s clear and aligns with the other analytics you are tracking. Using Optimole usage statistics, we track the number of website visitors, which can help you track your usage as part of your site-wide tracking.

⚙️ Why Optimole and Google Analytics numbers differ

It is normal for Optimole to report a higher visit count than Google Analytics. The two tools measure traffic in fundamentally different ways, and neither number is wrong — they capture different data.

Optimole uses server-side, CDN-level tracking. Every time an image is requested from the Optimole CDN, the request is logged using the visitor's IP address and user agent. A unique combination of IP + user agent within a 24-hour window counts as one visit. This happens at the server level, before the browser renders the page.

Google Analytics uses client-side JavaScript tracking. A visit is only recorded when the GA script loads and executes in the visitor's browser.

Because of this difference, Optimole counts traffic that Google Analytics misses:

• Bots, crawlers, and automated requests — including search-engine crawlers, LLM scrapers, uptime monitors, and other automated tools that request images but never execute JavaScript.
• Ad-blocker users — many ad blockers prevent Google Analytics from loading, so those visits are invisible to GA but still counted by Optimole.
• JavaScript-disabled browsers — visitors who disable JavaScript or use privacy-focused browsers are not tracked by GA.
• Partial page loads — visitors who leave before the page fully renders, or services that consume only images or partial content from your site (such as RSS readers, plugins, or APIs), are counted by Optimole but not by GA.

Optimole excludes known bots and crawlers from its count. However, unknown or new bots may still be included.

📝 Note: Optimole's CDN-level visit count is the metric used for your plan quota and any automatic upgrades. Google Analytics data is not used for billing. Learn more about how quota upgrades work in Visits based plan.

🔎 Checklist for large or sudden discrepancies

If your Optimole visit count is significantly higher than Google Analytics, follow these steps to investigate:

1. Compare the same date range

Make sure you are comparing the same date range in both the Optimole Dashboard and Google Analytics. Optimole's dashboard data resets with each billing cycle, so an empty or lower current-period graph does not necessarily mean earlier quota emails were inaccurate — it may simply reflect a new billing period.

2. Review your server or CDN access logs

Your hosting provider's access logs show every request to your site, including bot and crawler traffic that Google Analytics does not capture. Look for:

• Repeated IP addresses making a large number of requests.
• Unusual user-agent strings (e.g., automated scrapers, AI crawlers, or monitoring tools).
• Sudden traffic spikes that do not correspond to real user activity.

Your hosting provider can help you locate and review these logs if you are unsure where to find them.

3. Identify bot or crawler traffic

Large discrepancies are often caused by automated traffic. Common sources include:

• Search-engine crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot, etc.)
• AI/LLM scrapers and data-collection bots
• Uptime and performance monitoring services
• Hotlinking or content-scraping bots

If you identify specific IPs or user agents responsible for the spike, you can take steps to block them (see the next section).

🛡️ Reducing unwanted counted traffic

If bots or automated requests are inflating your visit count, consider the following measures:

• Host or server-level firewall rules — most hosting providers allow you to block specific IP addresses or user agents from their control panel.
• Cloudflare Bot Management — if your site uses Cloudflare, enable its Bot Management or firewall rules to block known bad bots before they reach your site.
• WordPress security plugins — plugins such as Wordfence or Sucuri can help block suspicious traffic and limit bot access.
• Block abusive user agents — if your access logs reveal specific user-agent strings causing the spike, add rules to block them at the server or CDN level.

⚠️ Important: Be careful not to block legitimate crawlers (such as Googlebot) that are needed for SEO and search indexing.

📩 When to contact support

If you have followed the steps above and the discrepancy remains unexplained, contact Optimole support with the following information:

• Your site URL.
• The date range you are comparing in both Optimole and Google Analytics.
• Screenshots of the Optimole Dashboard and Google Analytics for the same period.
• Any access-log samples showing suspicious IPs or user agents.
• Whether your site uses Cloudflare, a proxy, or a caching layer.
• Whether you received a quota warning or automatic upgrade email, and the date it was sent.

Providing these details helps the support team investigate your traffic data quickly.

📝 Note: For details on what happens when your plan limits are exceeded, see What happens if I exceed plan limits?.