Visitors create requests
Opening a page, loading its pictures, and pressing a button can each send a request. Together these requests make up a site’s traffic. More visitors usually mean more traffic, but one visitor can make many requests.
Teams may call a busy period a traffic spike. They watch request counts and response times to see whether the service can keep up. In analytics, “traffic” may instead mean visits or visitors, so ask which measure a chart uses.
When visitors arrive through unpaid search results, a team may work on SEO to help the right people find its pages.