EDIT
This post indicates that sessions should be interpreted as visitors for that hour.
Using the graph to identify which hour has the highest traffic and record
the number of visitors for that hour
I am looking at a Google Analytics report (Audience --> Overview) for a website. In section Audience --> Overview, I have selected Sessions vs. Select a metric. I have specified a frequency of Hourly.
I mouse clicked on a peak and saw
Thursday, January 17, 2019 10:00
Sessions:19,732
Is this telling me that I had 19,732 concurrent sessions open at 10:00? Or that in the hour between 9:00 and 10:00, that 19,732 sessions had been opened (and many likely closed)? Please note that
Avg. Session Duration = 00:09:07
I looked at How Count of Sessions is calculated and that leads me to believe that the 19,732 sessions is for the hour between 9:00 and 10:00.
Can someone confirm this?
Thank you.
Yes, that number would represent how many sessions were started during that hour.
You shouldn't interpret sessions as visitors/users. As one user can have many sessions during that hour. By default, max of 2 (new session at say the 5th minute, no activity, come back at the 35th minute, session 2).
Related
In the REAL-TIME / Overview page, you can see how much people are currently browsing your site. Although, how do you know if this current value is good or bad? I would like to know how much people were browsing my site the same time the day before, so I would know if I have 5% more or less people.
Also, how would I know if the site is doing it better or worse than 1, 2 or 5 hours before? The REAL-TIME shows the last 30 minutes of per minute page-views, but how do I know if the site is going down or up compared to a few hours before? 30 minutes is not enough.
Is there any add-on to add, custom modification to make, or free/paid service to complement?
You want to use the standard ("core") reporting. The dimensions that will help you are (UI / API):
Hour / ga:hour: A two-digit hour of the day ranging from 00-23 in the timezone configured for the account. This value is also corrected for daylight savings time. If the timezone follows daylight savings time, there will be an apparent bump in the number of sessions during the changeover hour (e.g., between 1:00 and 2:00) for the day per year when that hour repeats. A corresponding hour with zero sessions will occur at the opposite changeover. (Google Analytics does not track user time more precisely than hours.)
Hour of day / ga:dateHour: Combined values of ga:date and ga:hour formated as YYYYMMDDHH
Date Hour and Minute / ga:dateHourMinute: Combined values of ga:date, ga:hour and ga:minute formated as YYYYMMDDHHMM
Hour Index / ga:nthHour: The index for each hour in the specified date range. The index for the first hour of the first day (i.e., start-date) in the date range is 0, for the next hour 1, and so on
With the UI you can add a secondary dimension to reports or build custom reports, with the API you can need to build your requests from scratch (try the explorer, official API doc).
I'm trying to report conversions to Google Analytics from the server side of an app after a payment is successfully processed. I'm using the Measurement Protocol from the devguides. https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/
The problem is that it successfully shows the goal hits on the real time conversions report, but this are not showed in the normal conversions report as goal completions.
Is there any difference between 'goal hit' and 'goal completion' I'm missing? Or is there any delay on the data that makes into the regular conversions report?
There is a delay. Per documentation it's 24-48 hours (4 hours on a 360 account), although usually the data shows up somewhat faster.
Documentation:
Processing latency is 24-48 hours. Standard accounts that send more
than 200,000 sessions per day to Analytics will result in the reports
being refreshed only once a day. This can delay updates to reports and
metrics for up to two days. To restore intra-day processing, reduce
the number of sessions your account sends to < 200,000 per day. For
Analytics 360 accounts, this limit is extended to 2 billion hits per
month.
I used to think there was long delays in data showing up in GA reports as well, until I discovered a small bug in the GA system in regards to time zones. The system automatically selects the date for you on the reports, but if you live in a time zone like Australia or The Philippines, these can be out of sync, and therefore, the most recent data doesn't show up.
I now always set the date to "Today" or to the last few days, and I find all data comes through within minutes, not hours.
Before Tuesday, March 14th, we saw the data lag in Google Analytics at approximately 1-2 hours. (It was never immediate.) You can see this effect on the Conversions > Ecommerce > Overview page if you search by date and select "today" to "today" (1 day's worth of data)
As of Tuesday, March 14th, we started seeing the lag for this overview report anywhere from 8-12 hours, with an inconsistent aggregation time. For example, it is now 4 PM here on the east coast (EDT), and here is a screenshot of our GA overview tab (I have obscured the revenue number for our privacy). As you can see, there are no numbers after 6:00 AM.
We saw this same effect yesterday (about 8-10 hour lag), and the following day the overview report seemed to fix itself (catch up with all of the aggregated data).
Now, what's more interesting, is that if we either A) Add a "Secondary Dimension" or B) use a "Custom Report", we can see all our data near real-time. For example, if I switch into the Ecommerce > Sales Performance report, then add a Secondary Dimension of "Hour of Day", I can see all my data through 2 PM today (about a 2 hour lag as it is now 4:22 pm as I am writing this)
[
Note that to replicate this I sorted the "Hour by day" column by descending order (showing most recent first.)
Our questions are:
(1) Does anyone know why searching by Secondary Dimension or Custom Report shows us the data in more real-time than just looking at the overview report?
(2) Can anyone else confirm that what used to be a 2-3 hour delay now appears as if it is a 8-12 hour delay, starting on or around March 14th (possibly a few days earlier, this is the first day we can remember seeing this effect)
We are using Universal Analytics (with Enhanced E-commerce) implemented via the newer analytics.js. We are NOT using the older ga.js (we moved away from that about a year ago.)
We are not a GA 360 customer, just a regular free account.
From Google Analytics Help Center article.
Processing latency is 24-48 hours. Standard accounts that send more than 200,000 sessions per day to Analytics will result in the reports being refreshed only once a day. This can delay updates to reports and metrics for up to two days. To restore intra-day processing, reduce the number of sessions your account sends to < 200,000 per day. For Analytics 360 accounts, this limit is extended to 2 billion hits per month.
What it means is that for Standard accounts up to 48h delay is normal, if you have more data it can take more if you have less data it can be faster.
Regarding your observation that certain reports load faster than others this is linked to the design of Google Analytics Backends. Google will generate pre-aggregated tables with common reports to speed up consult and that sometimes can takes longer to process. Other non-common reports can't be answered by aggregated reports so it can be responded by a different backend that already has fresher data. So it is considered normal to see different levels of freshness in different reports.
Google Analytics 360 has fresher data of course.
This other table from the HC article highlights some of the differences and has more info.
Background:
I have a Google Analytics account using which I am tracking user activity for web and mobile app. After logging into your account and choosing the web property and the corresponding view, you generally see a dashboard with quick stats like Pageviews, Users, Sessions, Pages/Sessions, Avg. Session Duration, Bounce Rate and percentage of new sessions. You can change the time period (from the top right area of the Dashboard) to get the same stats for that period.
Problem:
Last week, I was interested in the three main stats: Page views, Users and Sessions for a particular day - say, day A. The dashboard showed the following stats:
Pageviews - 1,660,137
Users - 496,068
Sessions - 983,549
This report was based on 100% of sessions.
I go back to the dashboard TODAY and check the same stats for the same day A. Here's what I saw:
Pageviews - 1,660,137
Users - 511,071
Sessions - 1,005,517
This report is also based on 100% of sessions.
Nothing was changed in the tracking code for the web and mobile app. Could someone explain why I have this difference in the stats? Is this normal?
They need some time to update the system, otherwise their system would overwhelm
When you first create a profile it can take up to 48 -72 hours for it to start showing data.
After that time data will appear instantly in the Real-time reports.
Standard reports take longer to finish processing. You need to remember the amount of data that is being processed. Some of the data may appear in the standard reports after a few hours. The numbers have not completed processing for at least 24 hours, so anything you look at then will not be accurate.
When checking Google Analytics never look at todays or yesterdays numbers in the standards reports, if you want accurate information. Things get even more confusing when you consider time zones. When exactly is it yesterday? I have noticed numbers changing as far back as 48 hours. But Google Says in there documentation 24 hours. I am looking for the link in the documentation will post it when I find it.
Found it: Data Limits
Data processing latency
Processing latency is 24-48 hours. Standard accounts that send more
than 200,000 sessions per day to Google Analytics will result in the
reports being refreshed only once a day. This can delay updates to
reports and metrics for up to two days. To restore intra-day
processing, reduce the number of sessions you send to < 200,000 per
day. For Premium accounts, this limit is extended to 2 billion hits
per month.
So try doing the same thing again today but check your last day being Monday. When you check again next week the numbers should be correct.
I check my Google analytics on a regular basis to obviously see my daily hits and for some reason my UNIQUE VISITORS count dropped from 1770 to 1730 over a day. How this is possible?
I started to notice this about a week ago when I saw that my UNIQUE VISITORS count wasn't going over 1800 (which it should have considering the visits I receive). I receive an average of about 60 unique VISITS a day but even if it was 0 unique visits a day, it doesn't sound logical that my overall UNIQUE VISITORS count would drop.
Now I can't take GA seriously anymore ...
Anyone have this problem before and / or could shed any light on the matter?
The statistics are period based. When a day passes, the period (begin and end) advances a day as well. So is perfectly normal your total unique visits changes from one day to another, because the period changed too.
For example: lets suppose your site receive 60 unique visitors every single day. You check your Analytics today (13-08-2012) and see 1860 visits. That amout is the total unique visitors for the period from 13-07 until 12-08.
But lets say that your site receives only 10 visitors today. Tomorrow (14-08) you will see your total unique visitors drops from 1860 to 1810, because the period will be from 14-07 until 13-08.