In google analytics my site have 27000+ users weekly, and 52000+ session. which is around 1.8 page view/session. There is no authentication sessions, like sign in etc, website is in word press. I want to know when user enter in site and view a page it will be considered as 1 session, but if same user lets say open page after some time then will it be new session or old?
I am using W3 Total cache and in browser cache expires header lifetime is set to 3600 seconds. Is this time related to sessions. Default word press session for login users is 48 hours, but in my scenario its anonymous user.
In google analytic definition about session is "Its the period time user is actively engaged with site".
Please advise
Google Analytics has very limited information about what happens on your site. It will receive data whenever someone loads a page, and possibly when an event takes place (but only if you've set that up).
It is not informed when a user does any of the following:
Closes the tab or browser.
Shuts down their PC.
Follows a link out of your website.
You could rip out the power cord of your PC mid-browse, then turn it back on. If you picked up where you left off, Google would have no way of distinguishing that from you refreshing the page.
As such, Google Analytics has to to approximate the end of each Session, with a set of rules based on the information it does have. Google will consider a session over when:
There has been no interaction for 30 minutes (this timeout can be adjusted).
Midnight happens (This is mainly to keep the data neat. Time Zone is defined in the settings).
A new Session is created with a different Source, Medium or Campaign (so if you leave the site and return via a different route, this is for attribution).
Whenever you land on a site, Google Analytics perks up and takes notice. It then waits faithfully for your next hit. If you come back looking different, it'll close your old Session and start a new one. At midnight, it'll close all Sessions for everyone. Otherwise, it'll wait faithfully for up to 30 minutes. If you interact in that time, it'll excitedly update your Session and reset the 30 minute clock.
Incidentally, that's also how time on site is calculated. On your first hit, your Session is assigned 0 seconds time on site. If you interact again, that time is updated to match the time between the two hits. When your Session is closed, its final time on site is whatever the value was at the moment it was closed, so Bounces have a time on site of 0.
Related
We are using google analytics for tracking the users and revenues.
Our revenues arrive in batches usually 24-48 hours after the session.
We are using the batch API:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/devguide#batch
with the transaction hit type:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/devguide#ecom
We are setting properly (at least we think so) all the parameters:
Example:
v=1&tid=TRACKING_ID&cid=CLIENT_ID&t=transaction&tr=EARNINGS_IN_USD&dl=USER_URL
We are currently facing following problems:
almost all our incomes (like 99.8%) are assigned to the returning users (when you look at the tracking data we have < 40% of returning users)
almost all our incomes are assigned to the users with landing page not set
What can be causing that? Why the transactions are not joined with sessions?
The cause of this is how Google Analytics understands and processes sessions. For example, a group of hits (HTTP requests to www.google-analytics.com/../collect) sent by JS code while the visitor interacts with your site within some reasonable time range is considered a session. When a user interacts with your site the next day a new bunch of hits are sent and these hits are processed as a separate session. So when you're sending transaction data in 24-48 hours after the time user last interacted with your site this will create a new session. Since there was a user visit before a transaction data were sent a newly created session is reported as a session of the returning user. In the same manner, since there's no page path / document location parameter in your transaction data this newly created session would have (not set) as a landing page.
Check the documentation for more insights.
On of our products has been built using Angular.js. All tracking tags, including Google Analytics, are fired through a GTM container. We are using Turbolinks, so page changes within the site are loaded via ajax, although the URL does change. It's not strictly a Single Page Application, but we do use a virtual pageview event in GTM instead of a regular trigger.
Analyzing user paths on BigQuery revealed that we have an issue with session continuity, whereby users who trigger an event in the middle of a chain of pageviews will be treated by GA as being 2-3 distinct sessions, even though they occur within a 30 minute window.
How can we prevent this ?
You are correct that a Session shouldn't timeout for 30 minutes, but there are actually three reasons why a User's Session can come to an end.
They didn't interact for more than the Session Timeout time (This is usually 30 minutes).
They passed midnight (this is just to keep things tidy).
Their Source changes (so, for example, they navigate to your site by Google and by Facebook in the same Session).
Any of these could be causing your issue. I recommend you do the following:
Check that no-one has edited the Session Timeout setting.
Ensure midnight is defined in a sensible place for your site, and isn't near the Sessions that you're worried about.
Inspect these Sessions' Source field, to see if and why it changed. You may find that you issue is an inadvertently campaign tagged internal link.
For more information:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2731565
since these days, Google Analytics start to show message "Bad Event Tracking Code" for several my projects. Even for one mobile app profile.
The message:
"The Landing Pages report has a (not set) entry. Verify that tracking code for property Mobilni Aplikace sends a _trackPageview hit and that it does this before sending any events."
I didn't change anything in these projects, so I don't understand what Google Analytics want.
Has somebody similar issue?
Thanks
Google Analytics just recently added a means of notifying you of problems so you didn't have to change anything to cause this issue. It could be preexisting.
EDIT: Solution 1 and 2 may help, but what worked was "Solution 3" -- Upgrade to Universal Analytics and increase session length.
Solution 1 - Send less tracking data
If the Google Analytics property is for a high traffic site without Google Analytics Premium you are limited to 10 million hits per month including events Data Limits - Analytics Help. In this case analytics may have recorded a user's event but the pageview was ignored to keep your account within limits.
If you could be flirting with this limit try sending less event tracking by reinventing or removing some event tracking entirely. If you are blatantly violating the data limits track only a subset of users by setting the Sample Rate in your analytics.js (or ga.js) code.
Solution 2 - Find the problematic event code
If you are not going over the data limits you have an event being sent before a pageview.
Methods of debugging "(not set) entry present in reports for property" are described on this page What the value (not set) means - Analytics Help.
Verifying this issue:
Go to the Analytics property with the issue and click Behavior reports > Site Content > Landing Pages
If you see landing page = (not set), this is generally due to a session with no page or screen view level hits included.
It’s possible to have a session that doesn’t include a page or a screen view, but does include another kind of interaction hit type, like an Events or Ecommerce hit type.
Debugging this issue:
Identify which hit type is causing the issue:
use the advanced filter (found at the top of the data table) to
restrict the data to include page/screen views matching exactly 0
For each of these 3 reports:
Behavior > Events
Acquisition > Social > Plugins
Conversions > Ecommerce reports
Note: The "page/screen views" dimension may have disappeared in advanced filters under those reports, I will update this answer when I find out more.
Solution 3 - Session is expiring before user leaves site
You can configure a visitor's session length for your property in Session Settings under Tracking Info.
The default length of time for a session or campaign. An individual session or campaign for a given user ends after the amount of time specified here has passed (counting from the start of the session or campaign), so long as the session or campaign has not been stopped though another means. Learn more about Learn more about session and campaign timeout handling.
If the user's session expires but they haven't left the page and another event triggers there will be no page view before the event has triggered. In this case your site would fall under this category:
The length of a session and campaign depends on your site and business. Here are a few ideas to get you started thinking about session and campaign timeouts:
Lengthen the session time if you have a lot of content and expect users to take a long time engaging with that content. Conversely, shorten the session time if the site has a small amount of content. 5
Increase the session length under Session Settings so these events will still have an associated pageview.
Note: You can only configure the session length if you're using Universal Analytics.
Google Analytics is currently in the process of migrating to a new operating system, the tracking code you have given in the comments appears to be the classic code. based on the information you have given in relation to your application, I believe you would be affected by phase 2 of the migration which has recently taken place
You can find a timeline of migrations along with instructions about how to upgrade your applications the the new analytics.js tracking code here:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/upgrade/#phase-2
GA : « A period of interaction between a visitor's browser and a particular website, ending when the browser is closed or shut down, or when the user has been inactive on that site for a specified period of time. »
Omniture : «A visit is a term that refers to a visitor's access to a website. The visit begins when a person first views a page on your company's website. It will continue
until that person stops all activity on the site for 30 minutes. For example, if
you log in to www.omniture.com, you have one instance of a visit that will last
until you have incurred 30 minutes of inactivity, i.e. you have closed the
browser or left your computer. If you are inactive for more than 30 minutes,
and then you log on again, it is considered a new visit. SiteCatalyst also
terminates a visit after 12 hours of continuous activity.»
In the following scenario:
a user views a page then closes his browser for ONE minute before reopening and returning to that same page.
GA: counts this as 2 visits
Ommiture: counts this a 1 visit because the browser was not closed for more than 30 minutes !
Is this the correct interpretation ?
According to those listed definitions, that is correct.
However in my experience of using both tools, GA counts it the same way as Omniture : that is, if you close your browser, reopen it and hit the page again, it still counts it as the same visit, as long as the ping to their server was made before the 30m timeout.
But to clarify, yes, "visits" are persisted by requests to the tool's server (the image request from the noscript tag or js generated image requests, or via an API).
And another thing to note is that if you delete the cookie(s) set by the tool, it will count you as a new visit (and visitor, though possibly not unique visitor, depending on the tool)
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/08/update-to-sessions-in-google-analytics.html
Addition to above points or differences:
http://www.knowonlineadvertising.com/difference-between/difference-between-google-analytics-omniture/
The accepted answer is no longer true. Google no longer has Visits, but rather Sessions. From Google's definition of a Session, it states that one of the way a session closes is if there is a change to a campaign. What causes a change to a campaign?
Generally speaking, the campaign updates anytime the user arrives at your site via a search engine, referring website, or campaign tagged URL. Direct traffic, however, never updates or replaces an existing campaign source such as a search engine, referring site, or campaign-tagged information.
In other words, if I come to your site via Facebook, close the browser tab, and then come to your site again via search within 30 minutes, I've created 2 GA Sessions but only one Omniture Visit.
My goal consist of 5 steps. Everything works fine when user completes wizard without validation error, but if he returns to same step twice, goal don't get completed and Google analytics registers that as exit from wizard.
How can I fix this?
This should not be the case as funnels are measured for a particular "session". As long as a user visits all the URLs in the funnel and the Goal URL in the same session, then a Goal should be recorded.
Here are a few things to consider:
Are you sure that the user actually visits all the funnel stage URLs?
Is there a chance that the user ended a session (30 minutes) before moving on?
Is the form an AJAX form which does not register page views with Google Analytics?