Google Analytics report questions

sequencehosting · #1 (**permalink**) 06-03-2009, 07:33 PM

Hello fellow babblers,

Everyday I check my Google Analytics stats. I am seeing great improvements on my website (conceptskateboarding.com). Today I had a visitor from Chile who visited 21 pages! And stayed on my site for over 26 minutes. But I bump in to the following problem everyday someone will visit my website for 0 seconds, how is this possible?

Quote:

5. Spain 1 1.00 00:00:00 100.00% 100.00%

Thanks in advance for your replies. The above shows they visited for 0 seconds on 1 page and was a new visitor and had a bounce rate of 100%

Jack

lisa · #2 (**permalink**) 06-03-2009, 08:13 PM

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I believe I read that if a person only views one page then the time stamp will always be 0 seconds. A one-page visit is always a 0 second, 100% bounce rate visitor.

This is because Google assigns a time stamp when the person arrives and if they don't view another page then the time stamp remains the same. So if I arrive at your site at 3:34 and only view one page, they consider that a 0 second visit even if I've been on that page for 3 minutes. 3:34 minus 3:34 is 0.

I know it sounds crazy because what if someone was really on your page for longer? Why doesn't Google show that ? I guess they figure if they only stay on one page, it doesn't matter how long because they didn't want to stick around to view any other pages. I'll see if I can find an explanation for this because I'm not 100% sure. Maybe things have changed.

lisa · #3 (**permalink**) 06-03-2009, 08:17 PM

Read this...

http://www.google.com/support/forum/...32de2831&hl=en

This is not the site I read initially. I think I read it in the Google Analytics documentation somewhere, but the above link is what I was trying to illustrate.

sequencehosting · #4 (**permalink**) 06-03-2009, 08:30 PM

Thanks a lot for your detailed reply Lisa. Your first post made perfect sense, it’s a bit strange how they do that but I can’t complain since it’s the best tracking system. As someone said on the Google forum you linked too it would be nice to see the exact amount of time on the landing page.

TechieGuy · #5 (**permalink**) 06-04-2009, 06:30 AM

I have always wondered about the 0 seconds myself, and sort of thought about what Lisa said. I figured Google only collects information when their Javascript runs, and it won't run until a page loads.

sequencehosting · #6 (**permalink**) 06-04-2009, 06:34 AM

Yeah its been on my mind for a while as well, i was thinking "how can someone visit my site for 0 seconds" but it makes sense now.

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