What is a Google Analytics Session?

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A Google Analytics session is a group of pages and posts people read or interact with on a website during a 30-minute window.

Why are sessions important? Why is Google Analytics important?

Digital marketing is constantly changing and knowing what people are doing and not doing on your website is the basis of business knowledge. At a business level, web analytics helps ensure the marketing efforts are in line with your business goals.

Yet, does finding knowledge in GA feel like you are trying…

or worse knowing which button to click make you feel like…

You are not alone in the overwhelm when using Google Analytics.

The Google Analytics Session Defined

Translating this as a session is a ‘bucket’ filled with pages a user visits. This bucket has at least 1 page and is ‘full’ after 30 minutes.

A new session begins at 1 second after the 30-minute mark.

The session is a key GA metric, because if the number of sessions increases over time then the average time people spend on your website is increasing. If peeps spend more time then the chance they will get to know you, like you, trust you increases.

And people only buy from people they know, like, and trust.

A picture is worth a thousand words…

This example session begins when a person arrives from a search engine, a bookmark, an email link or social media post etc., and views page 1, click over to page 2, watches videos 1 and 2, then shares the page/post on Facebook, and finally, they click the add to cart button on a dog collar, oven mitt or course.

The session ends when a person leaves the Add to Cart page or when 30-minutes elapse.

The entire box counts as one session in analytics.

We can think of a session as a bucket. The bucket can grow into infinite size to hold as many pages and events – in a 30-minute time period. A session ends with a page exit or ends if the same user arrives from a different campaign whilst the first session is open.

Yes, a single user can open many sessions. And if your browser is anything like mine then you have multiple tabs open all at once. Implying multiple sessions.

Where in Google analytics are sessions found?

Find Google Analytics Session in the Audience Tab

Go to the Google Analytics/Audience/Overview tab, choose your reporting period red #3 and read the number of sessions – red #4.

Translating the numbers into words; during this reporting period (17/7 – 15/8/2021) 864 users (people) created 1171 sessions.

• 843 of the 864 uses were new and unique visitors to this website.
• The average session duration for all users was 1 minute 32 seconds.
• Each of the 1171 sessions had 2.1 page views per session. So a total of 2460 page views because the number of sessions times pages/session equals page views (1171*2.1=2460).
• The bounce rate was 42%. Meaning a little more than 2 out of 5 people arrived from outside of this website, landing (arriving) on one page/blog post, viewed that one page for an average of 90 seconds, did not click any links or buttons then left the website.

But, when does one session end?

When Does a Google Analytics Session Began and End?

Sessions begin a few milliseconds after a user arrives and ends when the timer runs out or a campaign changes. So there are two ways to end a session – time-based and campaign based.

• Time-based session:
  • after 30 minutes of inactivity
  • or at midnight
• Or when campaigns change:
  • if a user arrives via e.g search exits, then later the same day they click a link via an email.

Let us dig a bit deeper.

Time-Based Session

The default analytics maximum session time is 30 minutes of no activity on a page.

After the 30-minutes of no activity, the session ends.

Also, the session clock resets at 23:59:59. If Clare is researching ‘studded red dog collars’ at 23:50 on a Sunday evening her session end at the stroke of midnight and a new session open with a timestamp of Monday at 00:01.

This new session by the same user counts against the total number of sessions and the total Page Views.

Changing the default session time from 30 minutes is possible. This is how to adjust session settings. I would increase the time if I was hosting long-form videos or maybe online courses.

Just to be clear the clock is set and reset in your account time zone setting.

Campaign Based Session

Every time a user’s campaign source changes, Analytics opens a new session. Even if an existing session is still open, if the campaign source changes mid-session the first session is closed and a new session is opened.

Web Session defintion

Google Analytics opens a new session every time a new campaign source changes.

For example, if Clare arrived from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo search for ‘studded red dog collars‘, after 3 minutes she then opens a new browser tab and searches for ‘studded blue dog collars’. When she arrives on the website from the ‘studded blue dog collars‘ search the first session closes and a new session opens. Each is classed as a campaign source.

What is a campaign source?

In Analytics, the ad campaigns, search engines, social networks, and other sources that send users to your property are collectively known as campaigns and traffic sources.

It’s important to point out if a session is open and is less than 30 mins and the campaign source changes then the first session is closed and a new session is opened.

Why are Sessions Important to Analytics?

Because one of the keys to digital marketing mastery is understanding what people do and don’t do on a website. Further, if we can unlock the website secrets then we can create a higher converting landing page. Better landing pages help to a)satisfy user intent, b) improve the Google AdSense pay-per-click performance, and therefore improve c) search engine optimization.

And if we do all that then we achieve the business goals.

Featured Image Randy Fath

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