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Question:
How is Time Count Calculated when viewing ER Summary reports?
Reply:
Time Count is a subjective number among various customers. The way that we calculate it, is for each time a site is accessed, we assign a 10-second increment to the total time spent for a given user.
There is a threshold of somewhere around 8 seconds, to allow for page loads, so that you are only assigned a single 10-second increment when you hit a page, rather than 10 seconds for every object that loads on that page.
For example, going to http://www.google.com loads 3 different pieces of content, but you will still only be assigned a single 10-second increment.
Another example: Let's say that a user goes to www.xyz.com at 1:01:05, 1:01:07, 1:01:15, 1:01:20, 1:01:25, and 1:01:27. In this case, having elapsed time set to 10 seconds. His first hit will be at :05 second, second hit would be at :15 and third hit will be at :25 second. Therefore, for the example above where he went to xyz.com at mentioned times, he total time spent is 30 seconds, which reports show in minutes to actual time listed on the report would be .50 minutes.However, keep in mind, that that 30 second count is only for hits to www.xyz.com. If the user were to go to another site, say www.someurl.com, then a separate time count would be taken for those hits. The reason time count is such a subjective number is that there is no 'state' information associated with HTTP. The browser requests the content and closes the connection as soon as it receives it.
What the user then does with that content has no association with network activity - there is no way to tell if the user is sitting at their desk viewing the content that came through, or if they have walked away from their desk, or even if they have closed the web browser altogether. When someone is actively browsing a site, 8 seconds is a reasonable time limit to allow for a page to load, so if we see further activity outside of that time period, we can assume it's not due to the last request still loading, but rather a new request
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