I did read that in recent years 7000 people annually visit Gokyu. Seems like a lot for such a small place and one that is very hard to get to.
It is a lot of visitors, but over the year that works out to about 19 hikers arriving a day. Of course some parts of the year are more popular than others, but you get the idea. Base Camp sees about 35,000 visitors a year in comparison.
If you think of the region as 4 major valleys all converging near Namche Bazaar, most valleys have a sort of main attraction. The Gokyo lakes are the main attraction in this valley and Base Camp is the main attraction in the valley to the right of that. The valleys are connected by alpine passes. Most hikers do the classic Everest Base Camp Trek and hike up that valley only, returning the same way. The hike we did is basically the next step up from that - by crossing the Cho La pass and turning the route into a bit of a loop. It's the most popular alternative to the classic Trek. So Gokyo sees nowhere near as many people as Base Camp, but there's a significant enough number of people hiking here.. Everyone crossing the Cho La pass and anyone hiking in this valley will want to stop in Gokyo, it wouldn't make sense to hike up this valley and not come here (unless maybe you are studying the glacier, but still)
If you're wondering what the other variants of this hike are, the next step up would be also doing the Renjo crossing, which is the easiest of the 3 alpine passes to cross. We would have done that a day after Gokyo and then hiked back to Lukla down the left-most valley. We had high hopes at first that we would end up doing this.. but.. the trail kicked our butts
The ultimate version of this trek would be crossing the Kongma La pass in the east as well, which is the most challenging of the 3.
I might as well include this map, which shows you all the possible routes:
In theory there are other hiking options here, such as hiking to Gokyo, crossing the Renjo Pass, and then returning to Lukla. I doubt many people do this though, as the main attraction here is Base Camp. It should really be Gokyo if you ask me, but of course Base Camp has a certain appeal.