Digital marketing term
Session
The bundle of interactions a person has on a site within a time window—page views, clicks, events—usually ending after 30 minutes of inactivity. It is a core analytics unit for reading behaviour.
Detailed explanation
A session starts when someone arrives and typically ends after a period of inactivity (often 30 minutes) or when the calendar day rolls over. The same person can open several sessions on the same day.
It should not be confused with unique users. One person who visits in the morning and again at night counts as two sessions and still one user.
Page views, time spent, and events inside the session show how deeply someone used the site. In GA4 the model is event-based, but session remains a useful reporting dimension next to bounce/engagement and conversion.
Frequently asked questions
- How is a session different from a unique user?
- The same person can start more than one session in a day; unique users still count that person once.
- When does a session end?
- Usually after about 30 minutes with no activity, or when the date changes, depending on the analytics tool.
Related terms
Internal links for the topic cluster — read these concepts together.
- Unique UserA person or device identity counted once in the reporting window; that same identity can still generate many visits. Clearing cookies or switching phones can split one human into two records.
- Visit DurationHow long a visit or session lasts; used to judge engagement and content depth. Single-page bounces can show near-zero time, so read the metric with that caveat.
- PageviewA Page Impression is a single instance of a webpage being loaded or viewed by a user, regardless of who that user is.
- Bounce RateBounce Rate is the percentage of visitors who view only a single page and leave without further interaction.
- Dwell TimeDwell Time is a behavioral metric that captures how long a user spends on a page after clicking through from search results, and whether they then return to the search results.
- GA4Google Analytics 4: an event-based measurement model for sites and apps. Report logic is not a 1:1 copy of Universal Analytics.