Google Analytics Confusion - Unique vs. New Visitors

I have been questioning the report of Absolute Unique Visitors G Analytics has been giving me. Here is what I don't get...

As reported by GA

Total visits: 565,000

Total Unique Visitors: 135,000

So GA says that a total of 135,000 visitors visited a total of 565,000 times

But here is the strange part…

G also says that out of those 565,000 visits:

431,000 come from “New Visitors” and 134,00 come from “returning visitors”

I've studied the examples here: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=113734

This part in particular: “In New vs. Returning: The visit on May 5th from User A gets counted as a visit from a "New" visitor. Subsequent visits from User A (May 12 and 17th) get counted as visits from a "returning" visitor. All of User B's visits are counted as visits from a returning visitor.”

In the Unique Visitor example, both the visits from User A and B for May 5 got counted as Absolute Unique Visitors = 2. However in the example above, since B had been on site before (in April) in the New vs Returning count, they did NOT get counted as a new visitor (they got counted as a returning visitor). And even though A visited 3 times in May, only 1 of those visits got counted as a NEW visit. So in that example there was only 1 new visit between the two.

So let’s recap: Visitor A and B got counted as 2 UNIQUE visitors in May, but only as 1 NEW visitor. So in this example, and following the logic, the # of unique visitors should always be greater than the number of new visitors no?

If so, then how can we have 135,000 Unique visitors counting for 431,000 NEW visits? Should new visits not be 135,000 or less?

Have I misunderstood?

Thank you in advance,
Dino

 

I would say
565,000 total visits
565,000 - 135,000 = 430000 visits from not unique visitors (but we do not know yet how many visitors).

so I think is is mixed up in your
"431,000 come from “New Visitors” and 134,00 come from “returning visitors”"
and I have no idea what 565,000 visits is about - somebody's not friend with math at Google?

 

Nice Post. I also confused for same.

 

Sorry, 134,00 should be 134,000. But it still seems strange. How can there be 431,000 Visits from New Visitors (visitors that never visited the site before), and only 135,000 Unique Visitors (visitors that never visited the site before). Anyone know what am I missing?