A few posts ago, I wrote about how Google Analytics changed the way they calculate their time on site metric. They jettisoned visitors who only saw a single page (a bit of a challenge on a blog, eh?) in favor of calculating time on site only for visitors who saw 2+ pages. After much hubbub in the community, they’ve switched the time on site calculation back. Check out the full report on the official Google Analytics blog. Perhaps the Google Analytics team was riled by Dennis Mortensen gentle ribbing. The Web Analytics Association recently came out with 26 standard metrics (pdf) and here’s their word on Visit Duration. Sadly, they don’t talk about a standard for aggregating and averaging these data.
TERM: Visit Duration
Type: Count
Universe: Aggregate, Segmented
Definition/Calculation:
The length of time in a session. Calculation is typically the timestamp of the last
activity in the session minus the timestamp of the first activity of the session.Comments:
When there is only one piece of activity in a session (a single-page visit or singleevent
visit), no visit duration is typically reported.
At the same time, Google Analytics also changed how they order parameters in the URLs the report. So, if you have a site with a URL structure like www.ilovealexcohen.com/index.htm?love=alex&alex=awesome, Google reorders it to www.ilovealexcohen.com/index.htm?alex=awesome&love=alex. And it treats the URLs as separate.
This could have a big impact on your funnels, goal tracking, navigation summary and more. Please review your data and make any adjustments as necessary.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Read One of These Similar Posts:Subscribe To Digital Alex
About Me
Digital Alex is a blog about interactive marketing strategies, web analytics, conversion and more.
You can email me: alex AT alexlcohen DOT com
Check out my About Me page for a little more on my background.
very gentle! :-)
Cheers mate..
Dennis R. Mortensen, COO at IndexTools
http://visualrevenue.com/blog