As a website owner or digital marketer, understanding how users interact with your website is crucial to improving its performance. Google Analytics is a powerful tool that provides insights into the behavior of your website visitors. One important metric in Google Analytics is the session timeout duration. In this article, we’ll explore what session timeout duration is and the default duration in Google Analytics.
What is Session Timeout Duration?
Session timeout duration refers to the amount of time that a user can spend on your website before their session is considered to have ended. In Google Analytics, a session is a period of user activity on your website. By default, a session is ended after 30 minutes of user inactivity, which means that if a user is inactive on your website for more than 30 minutes, their session will end, and a new session will begin when they return to your website.
Why is Session Timeout Duration Important?
Session timeout duration is important because it affects the accuracy of your website data in Google Analytics. If the session timeout duration is set too short, it may result in a higher bounce rate and lower session duration. On the other hand, if the session timeout duration is set too long, it may result in artificially inflated session duration and a lower bounce rate. By understanding the default session timeout duration in Google Analytics, you can adjust it to better suit your website’s needs and improve the accuracy of your data.
The Default Session Timeout Duration in Google Analytics
As mentioned earlier, the default session timeout duration in Google Analytics is 30 minutes. This means that if a user is inactive on your website for more than 30 minutes, their session will end, and a new session will begin when they return to your website. It’s important to note that you can adjust the session timeout duration in Google Analytics if you need to.
To change the session timeout duration in Google Analytics, you’ll need to modify the tracking code on your website. Specifically, you’ll need to add a line of code to the tracking script that specifies the desired session timeout duration. For example, if you wanted to change the session timeout duration to 60 minutes, you would add the following line of code to the tracking script:
ga('create', 'UA-XXXXX-Y', {'sessionTimeout': 60});
This code tells Google Analytics to use a session timeout duration of 60 minutes instead of the default 30 minutes. It’s important to note that this change will only affect sessions that begin after the modified tracking code is implemented. Any sessions that began before the change will still use the default 30-minute session timeout duration.
Conclusion
Session timeout duration is an important metric in Google Analytics that affects the accuracy of your website data. The default session timeout duration in Google Analytics is 30 minutes, but you can adjust it to better suit your website’s needs. By understanding session timeout duration and making adjustments as needed, you can ensure that your website data is as accurate as possible.
