What Are Google Analytics Sessions? 2020 Guide

What are Sessions in Google Analytics?

A Session in Google Analytics is a visit to your website/app. Sessions in Google Analytics are the total number of visits to your site. A session begins when a visitor lands on your site, includes all engagements and conversions occurring during the visit and ends when that visitor leaves your site.

This article will go a lot more in-depth on sessions, and how you can make the most of your data.

While there are more advanced definitions, to keep things simple – a session starts when the visitor lands on your website. This triggers the Google Analytics code to fire, registering the session’s hit inside of GA.

Google Analytics Sessions can also restart, although this is technically due to a session ending abruptly and another session starting in its place. There are 2 main causes of this:

• Campaign Changes:
  • When a session begins, it’s associated with a source, medium, and campaign relating to that session. If that campaign data is replaced, it will end the current session and restart a new one.
  • The most common cause I see causing this to happen relates to using UTM Parameters (campaign tracking tags) on internal links. In short, do not use UTMs on your site for links pointing inside your site.
  • Another potential cause is visitors clicking an ad or link to your site while they are currently on your site. ex (a visitor keeps your site open, navigates to their email in another tab, and then clicks a link to your site). For the same reason to UTMs, this updates the campaign tag and cause the session to end/restart.
• 2 Day Sessions:
  • If a visitor is on your website around midnight, the session will end at midnight and another will restart immediately. This is based on the Time Zone set in your Google Analytics Settings and does not factor in the Time Zone of the user and/or company.

The length of a session is the time between the first and last Google Analytics hits, which include page views, events, and transactions. Sessions will automatically end after 30 minutes of inactivity, so the session will continue as long as hits are being sent.

Single hit sessions, such as when a visitor lands on the site and leaves before clicking to another page or firing an event, have a session length of 0 seconds. Without a first and last hit, there is no session duration passed. Events using a timer trigger can be used to more accurately capture a visitor’s time on site.

The Average Session Duration calculation ignores these 0-second hits, meaning bounces do not skew this number. However, this also means you’re only looking at sessions with 2 or more hits, which isn’t a true representation of all the visitors to your site.

There are 3 different reasons a Google Analytics Session will end, including 30 minutes of inactivity, the day changes at midnight in the website’s timezone, and a campaign changing.

1. 30 Minutes Of Inactivity:
   • By default, Google Analytics will end sessions after 30 minutes of inactivity. This can be changed in the Property Settings and set anywhere from 1 minute to 4 hours. If you have a site where it’s normal for visitors to go idle for a while, such as a video site – you may want to lengthen the default window.
2. Midnight:
   • Sessions will end at midnight, and will automatically restart at 12:01:01. This is based on the Time Zone set in Google Analytics and not that of the user.
3. Campaign Changes:
   • As discussed in the “what starts a session,” when the campaign data for a current session is replaced, it will end that current session abruptly.

While sessions are one of the main metrics in Google Analytics, the number of sessions is used when calculating some of the key engagement and conversion metrics in the platform. This section provides more detail on those metrics, including what they mean and the formulas for calculating.

Sessions By Channel

To view Sessions By Channel, navigate to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels

Sessions By Location

To view Sessions By Location, navigate to Audience > Geo > Location

Sessions By Device

To view Sessions By Device, navigate to Audience > Mobile > Overview

Sessions By Landing Page

To view Sessions By Landing Page, navigate to Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages

Sessions By New vs Returning Visitors

To find Sessions By User Type, navigate to Audience > Behavior > New vs Returning

Sessions By Time Of Day

If you navigate to Home, you’ll see a chart that includes Users By Time of day. This is helpful, but it may not line up perfectly with Sessions. In most of the Analytics reports, you can add “hour” as a secondary dimension, which allows you to export and pivot sessions around the time of the day. But not really the cleanest process.

The best way I’ve found is to create a custom report. Simply click the link below and select your Google Analytics View from the drop-down list that appears. You’ll now find your Sessions By Time Of Day report when you navigate to Customization > Custom Reports.

https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=qoWFvLJyTNGrc17acIS6Lw