hi, i’m amr. a ga4 session isn’t a visit in the everyday sense. it ends on a timer, and google’s help page gives the default and tells you where to change it.
what google analytics help says
- “By default, a session ends or times out after 30 minutes of user inactivity.”
- a new session starts when a user opens your app in the foreground or views a page or screen and no session is active, for example after the previous one timed out
- for web, you can set the timeout in hours and minutes: admin, data streams, your web stream, configure tag settings, show all, adjust session timeout
- for apps, the 30-minute default is changed through the setSessionTimeoutDuration method
- analytics counts sessions by “estimating the number of unique session IDs”
my reading, with an illustrative example: a buyer who opens your pricing page, leaves it open while the team discusses it, and comes back after 40 minutes would start a new session under the default. the same person then shows up as two sessions in your report. the 40 minutes is my example, not a figure from google.
what to check this week
- open the adjust session timeout setting on each web stream and note what it says
- find out whether anyone changed it, and when. a change alters how sessions are counted from that date on
- if you compare sessions across periods, write down the timeout that applied to each period
- read this next to the engagement rules in my earlier post, since engaged sessions are built on top of sessions
where this stops applying
the page doesn’t recommend a value and doesn’t state a minimum or maximum, so this post doesn’t tell you to lengthen or shorten the timeout. it covers what the default is and where the setting lives. i haven’t seen your property, so the check list above is a starting point.
start scaling — if your session counts and your crm’s lead counts never seem to line up, a measurement review usually finds the reason. let’s connect.
Sources: Google Analytics Help, session timeout and how sessions are counted (support.google.com/analytics/answer/9191807). Figures are published product documentation, not verified results from Amr’s own client accounts.