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0 second visits according to Google Analytics

paweljaniak.co.za

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Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#21

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

simontabor wrote: post #8

We get a lot of questions at GoSquared ( https://gosquared.com ) as to why their engagement metrics (and visitor counts) are so different between GA and GoSquared. Pinging all visitors to check their still online is our solution, rather than making a guess/estimate - this means that sometimes GA reports about 10 visitors online when there are actually more like 100. This is especially true with HN posts where most pe…

Does that mean GoSquared will report a page that has been open for days, taking up a tab but not being actively looked at, as 'online', or is there a timeout after a specific period of inactivity?

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#22

Post by dangrossman »

dhughes wrote: post #20

What is a visit is it the search time or the time I am on the page? I know I have searched for things that seem to take a long time (when I am in a rush) but the results page show my search took e.g. 0.22 seconds when really the page may have loaded slow or I had to reload the page taking maybe 30 seconds or Google Instant is being annoying.

That's the time Google spent preparing the result page for your search (finding and sorting the matching results). Actual time between you making a search and seeing that page involves much more than that computation, such as network latency and time to transfer the HTML.

Did you read this submission? It's not about Google search results. It's about how the time-on-site metric in Google Analytics is computed.

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#23

Post by azernik »

dhughes wrote: post #20

What is a visit is it the search time or the time I am on the page? I know I have searched for things that seem to take a long time (when I am in a rush) but the results page show my search took e.g. 0.22 seconds when really the page may have loaded slow or I had to reload the page taking maybe 30 seconds or Google Instant is being annoying.

A visit is the time you are on the page (that is, not including any time you spent on Google or your favorite social network finding a link to the page). Which makes sense - the length of a visit to a physical place doesn't count the time you spend looking up its address while you're at somewhere else entirely.

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#24

Post by shurcooL »

Can I get some feedback on the following idea please:

- Maintain an open (but idle) websocket connection on your page to have an accurate real-time visitor information. The websocket should remain open as long as the user doesn't close the tab or navigate away.

What are some cons that prevent everyone from doing so?

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#25

Post by dangrossman »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #21
simontabor wrote: post #8

We get a lot of questions at GoSquared ( https://gosquared.com ) as to why their engagement metrics (and visitor counts) are so different between GA and GoSquared. Pinging all visitors to check their still online is our solution, rather than making a guess/estimate - this means that sometimes GA reports about 10 visitors online when there are actually more like 100. This is especially true with HN posts where most pe…

Does that mean GoSquared will report a page that has been open for days, taking up a tab but not being actively looked at, as 'online', or is there a timeout after a specific period of inactivity?

I don't know about GoSquared, but I built a similar real-time dashboard for W3Counter [1] that operates the same way. It would include that visitor as long as the tab is still open, but it also shows how many visitors are idle versus writing or reading (recently scrolled or moved the mouse, which requires the tab be in the foreground), so you know how many are just sitting in tabs.

1: http://www.w3counter.com/features/pro

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#26

Post by dhimes »

shurcooL wrote: post #24

Can I get some feedback on the following idea please: - Maintain an open (but idle) websocket connection on your page to have an accurate real-time visitor information. The websocket should remain open as long as the user doesn't close the tab or navigate away. What are some cons that prevent everyone from doing so?

I have many tabs open that I'm not actually "on." I just took a shower and left HN open, for example. Can it detect that the tab is "active" or "focus?" That may help. But I'm not sure this is a problem worth a ton of work. It's, at best, a proxy for measuring things like interest.

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#27

Post by thezilch »

shurcooL wrote: post #24

Can I get some feedback on the following idea please: - Maintain an open (but idle) websocket connection on your page to have an accurate real-time visitor information. The websocket should remain open as long as the user doesn't close the tab or navigate away. What are some cons that prevent everyone from doing so?

~50% of visitors don't have websocket support, and there is not, afaik, a free service offering such, and otherwise, it is probably not straightforward enough for the 99% to setup.

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#28

Post by shurcooL »

shurcooL wrote: post #24

Can I get some feedback on the following idea please: - Maintain an open (but idle) websocket connection on your page to have an accurate real-time visitor information. The websocket should remain open as long as the user doesn't close the tab or navigate away. What are some cons that prevent everyone from doing so?

You can see a sample in action here [1]. The page should list every single person in the world (whose browser supports websockets) who is currently on that page. You can open multiple tabs and see that whenever you close/navigate away, your corresponding entry will disappear.

[1] https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8554242/live-status.html

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#29

Post by shurcooL »

dhimes wrote: post #26
shurcooL wrote: post #24

Can I get some feedback on the following idea please: - Maintain an open (but idle) websocket connection on your page to have an accurate real-time visitor information. The websocket should remain open as long as the user doesn't close the tab or navigate away. What are some cons that prevent everyone from doing so?

I have many tabs open that I'm not actually "on." I just took a shower and left HN open, for example. Can it detect that the tab is "active" or "focus?" That may help. But I'm not sure this is a problem worth a ton of work. It's, at best, a proxy for measuring things like interest.

Yeah, as you say, even if it just tells if a tab is open (active or inactive), that's already a good measure of interest.

But I think it may be possible to determine if the current tab is open with some javascript, and send that information through the websocket. Edit: what bsimpson said.

Re: 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

#30

Post by dangrossman »

shurcooL wrote: post #24

Can I get some feedback on the following idea please: - Maintain an open (but idle) websocket connection on your page to have an accurate real-time visitor information. The websocket should remain open as long as the user doesn't close the tab or navigate away. What are some cons that prevent everyone from doing so?

Everyone does do so already (though not necessarily with websockets; occasional pings are sufficient and more widely supported). Google Analytics has a real-time dashboard. So do most web analytics platforms these days.
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