Session (analytics)
In web analytics, a session is a group of interactions — pageviews, events — from one visitor treated as a single continuous visit, typically closed out after a period of inactivity (commonly 30 minutes).
Analytics and the web
A session groups activity so that "five pageviews in three minutes" reads as one visit rather than five unrelated ones. The grouping logic usually relies on an inactivity timeout: once a set gap passes with no new activity, the next pageview starts a new session, even if it is the same person. Some tools also force a new session at midnight or when a visitor arrives via a new campaign source.
Session count and session duration are foundational inputs to metrics like bounce rate and pages-per-visit, so how a tool defines a session boundary quietly shapes every derived number. Cookie-based tools tie sessions to a stored session ID; cookieless tools infer session boundaries from request timing and other signals, without a cookie or any persistent identifier stored on the visitor’s device.
Pulse Analytics groups activity into sessions to compute bounce rate and session-based metrics without setting a session cookie. A salted session hash resets every day at the site’s midnight and ties pageviews into one visit.