GA4 | Session Length & Engagement Settings

Session Length Setting

GA4 can be configured to adjust the session timeout length to any length of time up to 8 hours. The default timeout interval is 30 minutes. This is length of time for a User who remains inactive on a website or App for this amount of time. I used to recommend setting this to 30 minutes but given how much user behaviour has changed over the years I more often than not set this to at least 5 hours. After all, how often do you open a new tab, do some research and come back to the tab hours (or even days later). I’d rather keep all this casual browsing within a single session if possible and associate this visit within acquisition reports with the initial source / medium. This should also help reduce the total number of sessions and new sessions being marked up as Direct.

“Given how much user behaviour has changed over the years I more often than not set this to at least 5 hours”

Engaged Session Length

This defined how long a user needs to be on a website for before GA defines them as “engaged”. The default is 10 seconds which does not seem very engaged to me. Set this to the maximum value of 60 seconds. This will put a stricter metric in place for engagement metrics and can also be used to build audiences.

• Engaged Sessions

• Engagement Rate

• Bounce Rate (the inverse of Engagement Rate)

Where to Find Them

Cog (Admin) > Data Streams (Web) > (Google Tag) Configure Tag Settings > Show All (drop down) > Adjust session timeout