Time on site

[adriandg]

From what I understand, if you search for a keyword say "blue widgets" and you click on a result, and then spend 10 seconds there, and go back to google and click on a different result google will track that first result as being not very relevant.

What I don't understand is what happens when (and this happens all the time, i did it today) you click on a result go to that page, find it (not?) relevant and then get distracted, phone call, or someone calls you into another room in the office.  You end up accidentally leaving the tab open all day long, and never go back to the google search.  So your time on site to google is what? infinity? there must be an upper cap here? at some point they must say, ok, the user is gone, time on site = our maximum = 5 minutes?!?

Get me? any insight?

[DavidKonigsberg]

You are correct and i believe its about thirty minutes -see below

_setSessionTimeout()

_setSessionTimeout(newTimeout)

This method is deprecated. Please use [_setSessionCookieTimeout](http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gaJS/gaJSApiBasicConfiguration.html#_gat.GA_Tracker_._setSessionCookieTimeout)(cookieTimeoutMillis) instead.

Sets the new session timeout in seconds. By default, session timeout is set to 30 minutes (1800 seconds). Session timeout is used to compute visits (see Session in our Help Center). If you want to change the definition of a "session" for your particular needs, you can pass in the number of seconds to define a new value. This will impact the Visits reports in every section where the number of visits are calculated, and where visits are used in computing other values. For example, the number of visits will generally increase if you shorten the session timeout, and will generally decrease if you increase the session timeout.

parameters

[EGOL]

If I was google I would be using averages... or % of people who backbutton out in under ten seconds...  this will allow for some people who are distracted.

I am working hard to hold visitors longer.  Just added two videos to one of my homepages and increased the average visitor's time by forty seconds and average pageviews by 20%.

[RobertFisher]

EGOL

When you made that change, do you have the video on one page or multiple? Do you have any data or an opinion on effect by virtue of video length?

Thanks for another great insight.

[EGOL]

The statistics:  increased the average visitor's time by forty seconds and average pageviews by 20%.... are for visitors entering the homepage from a google search.

These videos were both on multiple pages.... and the visitor had the option of viewing the video on the homepage or clicking to a deeper page that holds the video plus an article.

Both of these videos were on the homepage - one at the top of the page, one at the very bottom - well below the fold.  The video at top was 45 seconds, the video at bottom was 3:00.  About 20-25% of visitors watched the top video and about 15-20% watched the lower video (data from CrazyEgg).

This is a homepage with a lot of diverse information so 20% of visitors viewing is very good in my opinion.  More people clicked the top video than anything else on the page.

I think that the length is not as important as the audience retention.  The 45 second video retails 90% of visitors for the entire length of the video.  The 3:00 video retains 70% for the entire length of the video.