Contents
- A session groups a visitor's activity, and ends after thirty minutes of inactivity by default.
- One user generates several sessions: the ratio of the two measures visit frequency.
- GA4 no longer restarts the session at midnight or on a source change, unlike Universal Analytics.
Definition
A session is a set of interactions of one visitor on the site, grouped in a continuous time window.
Formula
Sessions per user = sessions divided by active users.
Worked example
A site records 12,000 sessions for 8,400 active users over the month, so 1.43 sessions per user. A rise in this ratio without a rise in traffic signals that visitors come back more, which is often a better sign than a raw rise in sessions.
Orders of magnitude
The default inactivity timeout is thirty minutes and can be set up to seven and a half hours. Changing it breaks comparability with history: only with good reason.
The most common mistakes
- Confusing sessions and users. A rise in sessions at constant users isn't acquisition, it's a return.
- Comparing GA4 sessions to Universal Analytics ones. The splitting rules changed, the gap is structural.
- Comparing sessions to an ad platform's clicks. Some clicks never reach the site.
Where to find the metric
In GA4, the Sessions metric, available in almost every report. Ad platforms don't expose this metric: they count clicks.
Frequently asked questions
The Adwise team connects Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, GA4 and Search Console so agencies and freelancers can run their campaigns from a single place.