A session is a period in which a user interacts with a website or app, grouped into one visit for analysis. The SERP for this word is full of apps, therapy tools and restaurants. This entry covers the web analytics meaning.
How does GA4 count sessions?
A session starts when a user opens an app in the foreground or views a page or screen and no session is active. Google Analytics then generates a session_start event, a session ID and a session number. By default a session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity, with no maximum duration. For websites you can change the timeout under Admin > Data Streams > your stream > Configure tag settings. For apps you use the setSessionTimeoutDuration method or the extend_session parameter.
Unlike its predecessor Universal Analytics, GA4 does not start a new session at midnight or when new campaign parameters appear.
Other tools count differently
Matomo calls them visits. It starts a new visit after more than 30 minutes of inactivity, when a visitor arrives from a new campaign source, and when activity continues past midnight in the site’s time zone. Counts for the same traffic can therefore differ between tools.
Sessions and other metrics
Sessions are the base for several metrics. Engagement rate is the share of engaged sessions, and bounce rate is the share that were not engaged. In SEO reporting, organic sessions are a common measure of traffic from search. They are recorded on your site, so they need the tracking code to run, and they will not match Search Console clicks exactly.
| Aspect | Google Search Console | Google Analytics 4 |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility in Search | Impression: a link to the site was seen (or potentially seen) in Search, Discover or News | no own data; once linked, GA4 shows Search Console metrics in dedicated reports |
| Visit from Search | Click: for most result types, any click that sends the user to a page outside Google Search, Discover or News | records the visit on the site (session, events); clicks from Google Search only through the Search Console link |
| Session (this term) | no such metric | Session: starts with a page or screen view when no session is active and times out after 30 minutes of inactivity by default |
| Page views | no such metric | Views: number of web pages or app screens users saw, repeated views included |
| Data source | Google's data on how the site appears in Google Search | events sent by the Google tag (JavaScript) on the site; visits without JavaScript enabled are missing |
| Delay | data usually available in 2–3 days; the newest data can be preliminary | processing can take 24–48 hours; Search Console data appears in GA4 48 hours after collection |
| Privacy | anonymized queries: very rare queries are omitted from the table but included in chart totals | data thresholds: rows with demographic data or search query information may be withheld when there are too few users; not adjustable |
| Completeness | data truncation: only the most important rows are stored and shown, the table shows up to 1,000 rows; the most complete list comes from the bulk data export | sampling: if a query exceeds the event quota (10 million events for standard properties), a subset is used and scaled up |
Search Console clicks and GA4 sessions count different things, so their numbers differ. Google lists privacy, processing, time lag, time zones (Search Console counts days in Pacific Time) and JavaScript among the reasons. The two help pages give different delays (2–3 days in the Search Console Help, 48 hours in the GA4 Help on the integration). Sources: Search-Console-Hilfe: Impressionen, Position und Klicks; Search-Console-Hilfe: Leistungsbericht – Fehlerbehebung und Datenabweichungen; Search-Console-Hilfe: Leistungsbericht – Dimensionen und Datengruppierungen; Search-Console-Hilfe: So werden Klicks und Impressionen gezählt (vorläufige Daten); Analytics-Hilfe: [GA4] Analytics-Sitzungen; Analytics-Hilfe: [GA4] Dimensionen und Messwerte; Analytics-Hilfe: Datenaktualität; Analytics-Hilfe: [GA4] Datengrenzwerte; Analytics-Hilfe: [GA4] Stichprobenerhebung; Analytics-Hilfe: [GA4] Search Console-Integration; Analytics-Hilfe: [GA4] Datenerfassung für Websites einrichten. Last checked: .
Example
A visitor opens a product page at 10:00, reads until 10:20, then opens a second page. Both views belong to one session. If the visitor comes back at 11:00, the 30-minute default has passed and a new session starts.
FAQ
How long does a session last in GA4? It ends after 30 minutes without activity by default. For websites the limit can be adjusted.
Sources
- Sessions in Google Analytics – Analytics Helpsupport.google.com
- Sessions, views and users in GA4 – Analytics Helpsupport.google.com
- [GA4] Engagement rate and bounce rate – Analytics Helpsupport.google.com
- How Matomo defines a visit – Matomo FAQmatomo.org
- What are sessions in Google Analytics? – Yoast (secondary, Universal Analytics era)yoast.com
Last updated: