Average session duration
also called Avg session length
Definition
The average length of a visit in the period, as recorded by your web-analytics source.
Scope, grain and dimensions
- Grain
- One number per date range, or one row per breakdown value.
- Dimensions
- country · device · page · keyword · source_medium · intent · category
- Required filters
- date_range
- Aggregation
- An average of a per-row session-duration column supplied by the analytics export, with nulls read as zero. Unweighted, so low-traffic rows count as much as high-traffic ones.
- Metric type
- raw measure · seconds (inferred from the field name, not declared in the semantic layer)
Data sources
Skills and analyses that use it
Skills carry the judgment; the analysis verbs do the reading.
Skills
Analysis verbs
web_analytics_overview
Method rungs and levers
A rung tells you what a movement here can and cannot explain, read the rungs below it first.
Ask Quattr
- "How long do visits last?" Simulate this →
- "Session duration by device?" Simulate this →
How to read it
An engagement signal rather than an outcome. It is one of the two measures the engagement shorthand expands to, so it appears in default responses alongside bounce rate. Treat movement in it as a prompt to look at behaviour, not as a result in itself.
Caveats, freshness and failure modes
The unit is not declared anywhere in the semantic layer; seconds is inferred from the field name and the way the shared format contract classifies duration fields. Do not present the unit as established.
The measure's own label in the semantic layer reads "Average Sessions", which is a mislabel, it is a duration, not a session count.
An unweighted average of a per-row column; nulls are read as zero, so a zero can mean no engagement or no data.
Whole-domain only today.
- Freshness
- loads nightly, a same-day question gets yesterday's number, labelled as yesterday's.
Common failure modes
- Reading the mislabelled measure name and reporting a session count.
- Stating the unit as seconds without the caveat.
Not the same as
The confusions that cause the most wrong decisions.
Average session duration Average time on page Compare definitions →
One averages the length of a whole visit, the other averages time on a single page. They come from different columns and answer different questions.
Average session duration Bounce rate Compare definitions →
Both are surfaced together under the engagement shorthand, but one is a rate over visits and one is a duration. They move independently and are reported as separate columns.
Watch this metric read in a real run
All runs →
Related metrics and workflows
Verification
A definition is the smallest part of this.
The measurement matters because something acts on it. Here is the rest of the showcase, in the order most people find useful.