Analytics showing 0:00 time spent on page for 60-80% of clicks (8)
Analytics showing 0:00 time spent on page for 60-80% of clicks
Hey guys, on my analytics its showing average duration times of 0.00 for alot of the geo's
is this normal? i would assume people would atleast be on the page for a couple seconds.
would this indicate a server/site load issue or something coming from google ad words?
thanks
I wouldn't trust analytics... check your server stats... it is where you can find the accurate stats...
AWSTATS is where the real thing happens... if you have it installed...
if you really prefer google analytics... try putting your analytics code on the header... so the user will load the analytics first and it can start counting the time the visitor stays...
and if you still see a very high bounce rate... it could mean bot traffic... meaning they visit your page and close right away...
GA? On-page timers like that will rely on javascript and can therefore be unreliable for a number of reasons, including that browser updates may deprecate the methods used to detect 'on page time'.
I'm not entirely sure what server-side tools monitor on-page time and how they specifically do this.
Hmm, I'd certainly be suspicious if I saw that in my analytics package.
However, are the people who are being listed as spending 0 time on your site clicking on more than one page? Otherwise it's very hard for Analytics to give you an accurate on-page estimate - it needs two page clicks to check the difference in timestamp between them.
If you're running a standard affiliate tracker like CPVLab, Prosper, etc, you could also check timestamps between initial arrival on page and clickthroughs. That'll show up a lot of bots pretty rapidly.
Thanks for the replies. I do have a multi page review / lander but I would guess alot of people simply hit the first page than exit after that. This might lead to getting extra 0:00s. I had a feeling trusting GA was not a wise move. I am going to take a deeper look into my AWSTATS and see if i can get some more accurate results. thanks !
I also moved servers to a closer geo to where my clicks are being delivered so hopefully that helps load times (appears to be) if that was part of the issue as well.
Im pretty sure Google Analytic s doesn't record any time on-site for the first page view, so anyone who bounces without viewing more than one page will be recorded as 0:00's
Bshimmer, I have something more accurate than GA for this purpose. PM sent 
lewis69 is right. you could potentially solve this by triggering a virtual pageview after X seconds on the page.
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