Sessions in GA - need clarifications
-
Hello,
Regarding recent change in how Google now defines a session...
If a user visits a site from a different traffic source (say Google and Bing ) within 30 minutes, would that show 2 visits now ?
Was earlier it considered 1 visit ?
Also, sessions ends "at the end of the day" It can be different for different users ? How does Google defines end of the day ? for USA time ?
Thanks
-
Thanks Understood.
Also, if a visitor closes his browser before 30 minutes, would sessions continue ?
What if he closes the browser after 30 minutes ?
-
Sorry, that was a bit of a misleading sentence. I just meant the servertime that's seen by analytics. The only other instance would be if your GA is linked to your adwords account, then it'd feed off the timezone defined in your adwords account.
-
Thanks Daylan for your quick response. What is meant by "server time of the site as per the analytics account settings". Where can we see those in GA ?
-
Hey Atul, There's a bit of chatter about it on the analytics blog here:
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/08/update-to-sessions-in-google-analytics.html
Looks like end of day refers to server time of the site as per the analytics account settings. As for the different traffic sources, from what i can gather it would show as two sessions now. Different origin, different sessions.
Sounds like theres gonna be some wacky stats in a lot of analytics accounts over the next few weeks.
Hope that helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Longterm wordpress blog not providing seo benefit to main site - help needed please
Hi I have a bigcommerce ecommerce store, with a Wordpress blog on a subdomain. The store and blog have been active for four years, the blog is regularly updated with original content, has many links to the store, is promoted regularly via my brand's social media channels and mailing list, and has the simplest SEO basics covered via a Yoast SEO plugin. But the store sees very little, if any, SEO benefit from the blog. My question is: based on this information, and the details below, is there an issue with the connection between the blog and main site in SEO terms? And if there is, how can I start fixing it? Further info: 1 In my Moz dashboard for the store site, the blog does not show at all as providing any inbound links or linking domains 2 Google Analytics also shows zero referral traffic to the store site from the blog since April 2015 3 Moz crawl issues is flagging ‘duplicate page content issues’ for pretty much every page of the blog, and the analysis provided suggests this may be related to tags but I have only basic SEO knowledge and am fast getting out of my depth here. 4 I have today altered the settings within the Yoast plugin on the blog to ‘noindex’ for Tags, Meta Robots, based on advice I have found in this section but am already well over my head and unsure even this is correct. An agency have been running SEO for the store since 2012 but since uncovering how little they have done in this time for the money paid, I am now taking matters back into my own hands. However I am on a very steep learning curve and this one is beyond me right now - please does anyone have any suggestions where I can start looking to uncover the root issue? Any guidance or advice would be greatly appreciated Thanks very much and hope to hear from someone!
Reporting & Analytics | | Warren_331 -
Possible penalty question - need expert help
hallo everyone, I am posting this question to the MOZ community, because I could not find any useful information or proper advice so far, even after consulting a few local SEO experts. I noticed from the end of september a steady and consistent decrease in visits (please see attached pdf) for my website https://bastabollette.it I lost so far almost 40%. Please consider that I have not changed my habits in blog posting lately, both in quantity and quality. I have not made any subtantial change on the website lately. I did a general audit of the site asking to an expert but apart from some generic suggestions (like: "work on increasing PR, add more quality backliks, use more no-follow links, fix broken links" - things I am currently going to fix anyway) I don't really understand the reason of the drop. Please also note the strange drop of 11/22/15 (see search console screenshot). Can you please help me? thank you. Selezione_018.jpg Selezione_019.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | micvitale0 -
Clarification on Analytics Goals & Funnel Logic
I have a few questions about funnel flow and how my goals are tracked. 1. My goal is a user completing a contact form, form.html. Upon completion, user is redirected to thanks.html, ending the flow. Every page header contains a direct link to form.html. Does this mean every page on my site is considered a "step" leading the user to the contact form? If so, do I list each page containing the form link in the steps, or only form.html? 2. If the above isn't correct, how do I track how the user wound up completing my form. I'd love to know which pages are performing better and leading to more sign-ups (goal completions). Currently I think I'd only be setup to know when a user is on the form.html page and whether they complete it or leave, not how they got to form.html in the first place. 3. My .html pages are actually embedded via iFrame on WordPress pages. My form.html page is hosted on .com/quote and upon completion, form.html redirects to thanks.html within the iFrame (.com/quote remains the actual page). I'd assume this is going to throw off my stats since the physical .html pages don't have Analytics code embedded? 4. How would I track different CTAs on the same page which lead to the same goal? For example, header vs. footer CTA's to the same sign-up sheet. Let me know if you need anything clarified. Thanks a lot for the help.
Reporting & Analytics | | kirmeliux0 -
Comparing user behaviour in GA
Hi Does anyone know, can advise a process, for how to compare user behaviour (time on page, bounce rate etc) for a major site section/category page that's changed its url since a new site upgrade (so effectively 2 different pages i presume) with the old page version (say comparing U.B between the two pages and between June this year vrs June last year) in Analytics / Cheers Dan
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Can you use an advance segment as a metric or dimension for another advance segment in GA?
I have 3 advanced segments set up: Branded keywords Non-branded keywords (all) irrelevant non-branded keywords. irrelevant non-branded keywords are keywords where the visitor is not ready to purchase. for example keywords including terms such as "ideas" or "how to".. these have generated 0 conversions for us, and I want to track these separately from keywords that have a chance in converting, since the conversion rate between the two groups vary a lot. for the advanced segment "branded" - i listed a listed of keywords pertaining to the company name - using includes, Matching regexp and | (pipe) between keywords for advanced segment "non-branded keywords" - i took the same list and excluded matching regexp | between keywords. **for advanced segments "irrelevant keywords" ** - i took one word as the keyword and used includes, contains, and the keywords.. using OR statement between keywords. pipe doesn't seem to work with the "contains", and only seems to work with "matching regexp". **What i want to do is excluded all items from "Irrelevant keywords" in advanced segment "Non-branded keywords". but i can't seem to exclude based on another custom segment. **nor can I list - [X statement OR (statement y OR statement Z OR statement AB)] any thoughts on handling this logic?
Reporting & Analytics | | S.S.N0 -
GA E-Commerce can't tell the real order source?
I put the e-commerce tracking code on the transaction platform (Regnow) finishing page, but all the orders displayed in GA can't tell the real order source. Instead, most of orders are from direct(none), and referrals from my site. So this is obviously wrong. I need the accurate order source such as google organic or google ppc, then I can find which keyword brings me orders. After some searches, I guess the reason is cookie domain. My GA is set as single domain tracking. And I didn't put any cookie domain code on the Regnow's transaction finishing page. The codes I put on the page are: So, suppose my site is "www.example.com". How to make sure I can track the real order source on the Regnow's transaction finishing page? Should I set my GA to track multi top-level domains, and put _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', '']); code on the tracking page? How to set the domain name, "none" or "example.com"?? Thanks in advance.
Reporting & Analytics | | JonnyGreenwood0 -
How to track subfolders in GA?
Is it possible to get the visitor statistics for a subfolder (example.com/blog/) in Google Analytics? I already have GA tracking set-up like normal, and visitors do get logged, but to see data only for /blog/ I have to go to Content > Site Content > All pages and search for "/blog/". Should I create a new profile in Google Analytics? Or is there a better way to only see stats for a subfolder?
Reporting & Analytics | | Qon0 -
Do I need to turn off custom results or empty my cache before using the SEOMOZ Pro Rank checker?
I'm getting unusual swings in SERPS ranks from one day to another (I had several keywords ranked in top ten go to the the third or fourth page in a week). I knwo that there's always variation because of localized and custom search, but this seems to be something more.
Reporting & Analytics | | bbelgard0