In Google Analytics, a session is a period of time during which a user interacts with your website or app. A session is a group of user interactions with your website that take place within a given time frame. For example, a single session can contain multiple page views, events, social interactions, and e-commerce transactions. A session initiates when a user either opens your app in the foreground or triggers the session_start event on your website. A session can last as long as several hours or more and can contain multiple hits, such as page views, button clicks, events, and transactions. When a user leaves your site or is inactive for 30 minutes, the session ends.

It is important to track sessions in Google Analytics because it can help evaluate whether your paid marketing (Google Ads) and search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns are working. Sessions can tell you how much time users spend on your site and what they do on your website during that time. You can find session data for your website in both Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics.

To summarize, sessions in Google Analytics are a metric that groups a single user’s interactions with your website within a given time period. A session initiates when a user either opens your app in the foreground or triggers the session_start event on your website, and it can last as long as several hours or more. Tracking sessions can help evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and provide insights into user behavior on your website.