Unique Visitor - "Maximum Visit Length

Unique visitor setting length

[Bazzaman]

I have a 'Statcounter' tracker and they recommend the following:

"Maximum Visit Length - Used to calculate your unique and returning visitors from a cookie. If this amount of time or more has elapsed since a visitor last visited a page on your website, then that visitor is considered unique. We recommend setting it between 1 and 6 hours. We don't recommend setting it to 24 hours and above."

Am I being dense? Can anyone explain to me why this is because it seems to me that such short times will only give an over-misrepresentation of the number of true hits I am liable to receive from visitors who are shown as unique but are really returning visitors. My own logic says it should be more like 24 hours to get a truer picture.

Words of wisdom appreciated.

Regards,

Barry

[gregbo]

You'll get a wide variety of opinions on what the length of a visit should be. Some feel (for the purposes of counting unique visits) that it should be as low as 30 minutes.

My advice: find out what the people who want this information really need. Explain to them how measuring visits on the web is not an exact science.

[Bazzaman]

gregbo, I think I can see where this may lead and, obviously, with a shorter time span it will result in showing more impressive figures for unique visitors to impress clients. However, on this occasion, I would like the question not to be answered from this stance, but from a purely acadenic view point so I can totally understand the facts and make decsions based upon them.

[gregbo]

Well, there isn't a (single) academic POV with regards to identifying unique users, visits, etc. (For example, read Rebecca Lieb's article [clickz.com...] .) Unique counts can be affected by whether addresses are reassigned with DHCP, cookies are deleted, etc. This is why when people ask how they should measure certain online behavior, I suggest that they meet with their management, explain the limitations of measuring this aspect of the medium, and ask what the goals of the analysis are.