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  • GA : « A period of interaction between a visitor's browser and a particular website, ending when the browser is closed or shut down, or when the user has been inactive on that site for a specified period of time. »

  • Omniture : «A visit is a term that refers to a visitor's access to a website. The visit begins when a person first views a page on your company's website. It will continue until that person stops all activity on the site for 30 minutes. For example, if you log in to www.omniture.com, you have one instance of a visit that will last until you have incurred 30 minutes of inactivity, i.e. you have closed the browser or left your computer. If you are inactive for more than 30 minutes, and then you log on again, it is considered a new visit. SiteCatalyst also terminates a visit after 12 hours of continuous activity.»

In the following scenario: a user views a page then closes his browser for ONE minute before reopening and returning to that same page.

  • GA: counts this as 2 visits
  • Ommiture: counts this a 1 visit because the browser was not closed for more than 30 minutes !

Is this the correct interpretation ?

drenocartero
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4 Answers4

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According to those listed definitions, that is correct.

However in my experience of using both tools, GA counts it the same way as Omniture : that is, if you close your browser, reopen it and hit the page again, it still counts it as the same visit, as long as the ping to their server was made before the 30m timeout.

But to clarify, yes, "visits" are persisted by requests to the tool's server (the image request from the noscript tag or js generated image requests, or via an API).

And another thing to note is that if you delete the cookie(s) set by the tool, it will count you as a new visit (and visitor, though possibly not unique visitor, depending on the tool)

CrayonViolent
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  • p.s.- here is a link that supports GA counting it as the same visit: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=57164#visits_vs_visitors – CrayonViolent Jul 27 '10 at 23:03
  • ..and here is a link showing what you posted...http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=33073 but you forgot to read the 2nd half of that: For the purpose of Google Analytics reports, a session is considered to have ended if the user has been inactive on the site for 30 minutes. Which means exactly what I mentioned in the answer: As long as a hit is being made before the 30m timeout, it will continue to count as the same visit. – CrayonViolent Jul 27 '10 at 23:06
  • The following slide support the notion that GA counts it as 2 visits: http://services.google.com/analytics/breeze/en/ga_cookies/index.html (Slide 8). The __utmc cookie is used to detect when a browser was closed: "So, why is the __utmc cookie needed? Let’s say a visitor quits and starts the browser and comes back right away to the same site. Since the __utmc cookie was destroyed, Google Analytics will know that this is a new session." – drenocartero Jul 28 '10 at 13:45
  • Right, but a session is not the same as a visit. I suppose one way to settle this for sure is to put up a test page and hit it, close the browser and hit it again...too bad it takes 24hrs to see data in GA show up :/ – CrayonViolent Jul 28 '10 at 21:03
  • Actually I believe in GA, a session is the same as a visit, check slide 3 at http://services.google.com/analytics/breeze/en/interpreting_reports_visits/index.html "A visit -- or session -- is a period of interaction between a web browser and a website. Closing the browser or staying inactive for more than 30 minutes ends the visit. " – drenocartero Jul 29 '10 at 20:02
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Addition to above points or differences:

http://www.knowonlineadvertising.com/difference-between/difference-between-google-analytics-omniture/

Avinash Tiwary
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The accepted answer is no longer true. Google no longer has Visits, but rather Sessions. From Google's definition of a Session, it states that one of the way a session closes is if there is a change to a campaign. What causes a change to a campaign?

Generally speaking, the campaign updates anytime the user arrives at your site via a search engine, referring website, or campaign tagged URL. Direct traffic, however, never updates or replaces an existing campaign source such as a search engine, referring site, or campaign-tagged information.

In other words, if I come to your site via Facebook, close the browser tab, and then come to your site again via search within 30 minutes, I've created 2 GA Sessions but only one Omniture Visit.

pixelphantom
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http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/08/update-to-sessions-in-google-analytics.html

Adrian Muraru
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