How Visits are Calculated in Google Analytics

Visits is one of the main thing bloggers need to fovus more on. The more the visits, the more the conversion, the more money bloggers tends to make from their blogs. One way to calculate the visits is using Google Analytics. In this post, you will find out how Google calculates visits to blogs or websites.

 
Please note: The terms visit and session have similar meanings in Google Analytics and are sometimes used interchangeably. Also, this information applies to the ga dot js tracking method only.

 
The concept of a visit in Google Analytics is important to understand since many features, reports, and other metrics depend on how Analytics calculates this metric. A visit is a group of interactions that take place on your website within a given time frame.

 
For example a single visit can contain multiple pageviews, events, social interactions, custom variables, and e-commerce transactions. You can think of a visit as a container for the actions a visitor takes on your site.

 
A single visitor can open multiple visits. Those visits can occur on the same day, or over several days, weeks, or months. As soon as one visit ends, there is then an opportunity to start a new visit. There are two methods by which a visit ends:

 
- Time-based expiry (including end of day): After 30 minutes of inactivity by the visitor or at midnight
- Campaign change: If your visitor arrives at your blog via one campaign, leave, and then come back to the site via another campaign.

 
So in essence, one person can generate so many visits for your blog if s/he opens your blog after every 30 minutes of inactivity in a one day. If the same person comes back another day, the visit will be counted again. Also, these applies if your visistors came via a campaign (blog advert etc).

 
I hope this helps. If you have more questions, please feel free to ask using the comment form below and I’ll respond to you.

Originally posted 2014-01-02 08:00:47.