Sessions

What a session is

A session is one tab on one day: a new tab is a new session, and so is a new calendar day. A return from a payment page in a new tab is therefore a second session minutes after the click, and a conversion fired there reads as made outside ads.

A session starts at its first event and ends at its last. Its landing is its first page view, which carries the URL and its tags, the referrer, the address, the connection and the device. It is a paid session when its landing came through an ad — a click id, or paid UTM tagging, as UTM tags describes. A session that did not come through an ad opens here only when its browser clicked one of your ads before it: it reads "Outside ads" and is tied to that click. Other sessions have no screen.

The browser a session belongs to is the visitor, which lasts across days. A session never names a person: the browser is the actor.

How you reach it

The rail has no entry for a session; it opens from a row:

The back link, "Visitors", returns with the network, the campaign and the period you came from. The breadcrumb reads "Session" and the first eight characters of the id.

Every count and list reads the last 30 days, whatever period you came from — the header says "window last 30 days" — and there is no period control. Your plan's window still applies: on Free, the 30 days are read inside the 7 the plan reaches, so an older session is out of reach. Every event is kept on every plan.

The header

The title is the visit's number among its browser's sessions — "Session 2", the same number the visitor's Path gives it — or, without one, the time it started, "Jul 5 · 09:12" (UTC). Under it: the session id shortened to twelve characters with a copy control (the full id is copied), the day with the exact UTC time on hover, and "window last 30 days".

The numbers

A card follows. Its first line says what kind of visit it is — "Paid session" or "Outside ads" — and "2 of 3 on this browser", with Previous and Next to walk the browser's sessions in order. Then five figures:

Place in the journey

Shown when the browser has more than one session in the window: one card per session, in order — the network's or the source's logo, "Session 1", "Paid" or how it arrived, and when it started. This session's card is framed; every other opens its own session.

One selected page

Below, the screen has two columns: the visit on the left and Details on the right (under it on a narrow window).

The graph, the table, the timeline and Details share one selected page. Click a card in the graph or a row of the table, or walk with ‹ › in Details: the card is framed, the row tinted, the timeline rings its bar, and Details reads it. The screen opens on the page the primary conversion fired on, or on the landing; a reload opens there again.

Page journey

One panel, Graph, whose header reads "1 tab · 8 pages", or "5 tabs · 15 pages" when other tabs were open beside the visit.

A lane is a tab. A page opened in a new tab is a session of its own; the browser's sessions that overlap this one in time are the tabs open beside it. Each lane opens on a line of chips: "Tab 1", where it came from ("Paid · Microsoft Ads"), its span ("11:47:05 → 11:53:32") and its session — "Session 3", which opens it, or "this visit". Up to eight tabs are drawn. Where a tab came from:

A card is a page. It reads "Page 3 · 03/08", when it opened, the last part of its path and its step when it has one; the title, the whole path and the exact UTC time are on hover. Repeated page views of the same path are one card with "×4" — a single-page app reporting the page again, or the site cleaning the ad's parameters from its URL. A page that keeps its path but changes a step (step=2 to step=5) is one card per step. Click ids and UTM tags never split a page.

Chips at a card's foot are its events: the deepest scroll ("↧ 75%"), "×4", a shield for a consent choice, an outlined diamond for a secondary conversion, and a filled one with the value for a primary conversion — "€69.80", in green.

Arrows are navigations: a light line for a move inside the app, a heavier one for a full page load, with the time between the two page views ("+1m 09s") — measured, not reading time. Between lanes, a line from the page a tab was opened from.

Columns are in time order, not to scale (the timeline keeps the scale); a pause of more than 15 minutes is folded as "51m, nothing new". A wide graph scrolls sideways.

Pages & observed signals

The same pages, one numbered row each.

On a phone each row becomes a card.

Conversion

Shown when the visit reached a primary conversion: one card per conversion (one per id; a reloaded thank-you page is one order, while the Events list still shows every fire).

The card leads with the value in its currency — "€59.90" — or "No value declared", and "+6m 26s after the click", with the UTC time. Then:

Session timeline

"The visit to scale — each page as long as the visit stayed on it, every event at the second it arrived." One panel, Timeline, whose header reads "6m 27s · 8 pages · 26 events". Four lanes on one axis that starts at "0 · the click" (or "0 · visit start" outside ads):

Each primary conversion draws a line across every lane, labelled "Converted · €69.80 · +6m 26s". The legend lists only the marks drawn. Every mark shows its second and UTC time on hover. On a phone the lanes scroll sideways.

The footnote: "The last page is drawn open: nothing after the visit's last event is observed, so its exit is never invented."

Events

"The raw sequence as it arrived — page views, scrolls, clicks and conversions." Every event of the visit, in order, repeats included — where you check your own tagging. (Events counts the whole site's.)

Above the table, one filter per kind the visit sent, with its count — All, Page views, Scrolls, Conversions, Outbound clicks, Consent — and one for the selected page ("Page 7 · confirmation"). A filter narrows the list; clicking it again clears it. The page filter is off until you turn it on, or until "Its 3 events in the Events list" in Details turns it on.

The list is paged ("Show rows", the arrows). The footnote: "Unfiltered — a single-page app can report the same page twice on one transition; those repeats show here, where the Pages table folds them. A path prints on every page view and whenever it changes." — plus "Truncated at the first 500 events of this session." when a session has more.

Details

The right column opens on the selected page, then the visit's facts in cards.

Selected page — ‹ › walk to the page before and after it in its tab. Its path with its step, "Page 7 of 8", the tab when there are several, and the title. Then:

A note: "Measured time, not reading time." Signals on this page ("observed only") lists the page view and its time, "Reported again ×4", the deepest scroll, a consent choice, secondary conversions, and the conversion with its value. At the foot, "Its 3 events in the Events list ↓" filters the list to this page, and "The conversion it carried ↓" goes to the conversion. A page of another tab offers "Open Session 3" instead.

This visit

Arrival

The click — on a paid session; its header reads "tagged landing" when the ad's placement was recognized, "landing" otherwise.

On a session outside ads, two cards take its place. How it arrived: Source ("Email · Gmail"), Referrer ("none reported"), Landing, and Ad signals — "None · no click id, no paid UTM", or the UTM pairs it carried "— not a paid tag". Last ad click, the paid session before it: Session (which opens it), Ad network, Campaign, Searched (the term, when passed) and "+2 days after the click".

Environment

When there is nothing to open

Three states take the page's place:

• "This session's story didn't come back." — "The read failed on its way here. Go back to the overview and open the session again."
• "No session with this id after one of your ads in the last 30 days." — "Either the browser never clicked one of your ads before this visit, or the visit is older than the window this page reads. Head back to the feed to pick a click."
• "Nothing to read before Sep 14, 09:00 UTC." — "This month's event allowance stops the read there. Sessions after it were collected and are kept — a larger allowance opens them." See Billing.

What this screen does not do

• No picture of your pages. The path is the page's name.
• No invented exit. The last page's stay is a minimum, "≥ 29s", drawn open.
• No period control. The window is the last 30 days.
• No verdict. A VPN, a cloud server, a clock that disagrees with its address, odd landing parameters: each is stated as observed; the judgement is yours. A connection type describes the line, not the browser behind it.
• No "person". One browser on one visit is as far as it goes.
• Never refused, never shortened by a plan. A plan hides the full address, the provider, the postal area and the radius, as locks to billing.
• No folding in the Events list, no weighting of its rows. The table folds repeats; the list shows them, a conversion drawn like a scroll.
• No later consent. The Consent row is the choice in force when the visit started.
• No "active now". Every time on the page is fixed; liveness belongs to the feed.
• No export of its own. The session is a row in its visitor's or connection's export. See Export.