Google Analytics Changes Time on Site Calculation (Again)
September 16, 2007 – 7:56 pm
Google Analytics has (once again) changed their calulation of time on site reverting back to “the old way”. In the current calculation, time on site is calculated as total visit duration divided by all visits. Previously, time on site was total visit duration divided by (total visits - single-page visits) which in my opinion makes a lot more sense.
Single-page visits in Google Analytics are considered 0 second visits because Google Analytics (as well as most other vendors out there) needs at least two page views in a visit for it to even begin calculating that visit’s duration.
So by including single-page visits in this calculation, you’re effectively including visits that didn’t contribute anything to your numerator (total visit duration) and are therefore lowering your number of time on site.
Google claims they made the change because enough people demanded they “liked” the old way. What I think really happened here is that Google made a change, not enough people were informed and as a result a lot of people were a little ticked off with no explanation for a large change in this metric (one that many people use as a Key Performance Indicator)!
