Understanding Top Sources

[sdarwin]

Hi,

A "source" is when a visitor is redirected from another site (let's say Google) and "Direct" means the visitor arrived directly.

What happens when:

• the visitor continues to browse the site, page after page after page. Does that convert to "Direct", or would Plausible remember it was from a "Source"? At what point would Plausible lose track of the "Source", and assume it is "Direct", let's say after many hours or days.

• the visitor opens another tab in the browser, and then continues to browse many pages. Does that convert to "Direct"?

Is there an explanation in the docs?

Thanks.

[metmarkosaric]

hi! referral sources are based on user sessions. a session (also known as a visit) is a set of actions that a user takes on your site. a visit is started when a visitor first lands on your site and ends when no action is taken on your site for 30 minutes. while the session is active, any activity on your site including those in the original browser tab or another browser tab will be attributed to the original referral source. you can read more here https://plausible.io/docs/top-referrers

[sdarwin]

Thanks for the reply. Searching on the page you linked, the text "hours", or "minutes", or "seconds" do not appear using Ctrl-F (Find). The docs do not mention 30 minutes (right?).

I guess what you are saying is:

• If a user visits the site, reads a page, and then the browser tab is idle for 30 minutes, that would convert to a "Direct" if they return to browsing the site.
• If the user leaves the page open all day long, or multiple days, it's often going to convert to a "Direct".

In our analytics, there is about a 50/50 breakdown of Google versus Direct. However, because of the above mentioned phenomenon, I would suppose every Google visit also accounts for another 25% of the "Directs", from the 30 minutes of inactivity rule. In my own web activity, if there's a website that I spend a lot of time on I would leave a browser tab open, and return, over the course of multiple days.