qmap.pub owner here.

The counter is the count of active and unique user sessions in the past 24 hours. It's a rolling counter always showing the last 24 hours.

Here's how it works:

1) user hits the site

2) user session is created

3) user session expires after 24 hours of inactivity

A user can't have more than 1 session unless they logon from another IP.

I don't know what is driving the increase. Could be users or bots. Have to investigate further.

I had to add another web node this afternoon due to the load increase…