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Metrics

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What each figure on a site’s dashboard counts, and when.

Without cookies, some figures count differently from what you may be used to. A visitor is counted once a day, not once and for all, so visitors over a week are visitor-days rather than people, and don’t add up across sites.

The figures

Along the top of the dashboard, each with its change from the period before under it.

Pageviews

Every time a page is shown: loaded, moved to in a single-page app, or brought back by the back or forward button. Pages are counted by path, such as /blog/. The query string and anything after # are left off, so /search?q=cats is a view of /search.

Visits

One visitor’s pageviews and events in a row, until 30 minutes go by without a pageview, a click on a link or an event. A visitor who comes back after that starts a new visit.

Visitors

fivebar sets no cookies and keeps nothing in the visitor’s browser. It tells visitors apart by a code made from a secret, the site, and the visitor’s IP address and user agent, and throws the secret away at midnight in the site’s time zone. Neither the address nor the user agent is kept. So fivebar can tell that two visits today were one visitor, but never that a visitor today was here yesterday: nobody can, fivebar included.

A visitor is counted once a day, on the site’s own day, and over a range visitors are visitor-days: someone who came on three days counts three times. They aren’t unique people, and someone who visits two of your sites counts on each, so visitors don’t add up across sites.

A visitor whose IP address changes during the day, moving from Wi-Fi to a phone network, say, is counted again.

Bounce rate

The share of visits that bounced: that saw one page, kept it on screen for under 10 seconds, and sent no event. A visit that read its one page for 10 seconds or more isn’t a bounce.

Visit duration

How long a visit’s pages were on screen, added up, averaged over the visits. Time in another tab or behind another window doesn’t count, and a visit of one page has a duration too.

Bounce rate and visit duration are counted once a visit has ended, 30 minutes after the last thing it did, so they run up to half an hour behind the other figures, and say None yet until a visit in the range has ended.

On the site now

At the top of the dashboard, such as 7 on the site now: the visitors with a pageview or an event in the last 5 minutes. They’re counted as they arrive, where the other figures run a minute or two behind, and the count updates every 5 seconds while the dashboard is open in front of you. Bots are never among them.

The change from the period before

Under each figure is how far it has moved since the period before, as an arrow and a percentage, or for bounce rate in percentage points. Hover over the figure for the earlier one and its dates.

A range that runs to today is compared with the period before up to the same time of day, so a morning isn’t measured against a whole day. Filtered by an entry or exit page, or by a goal, it compares whole days, and says so far beside the change. There’s no change where the earlier figure is nought, or where the site wasn’t yet counting.

The chart

Pageviews over the range: by the hour over a day or two, by the day up to a month, by the week up to half a year, and by the month beyond. Weeks start on the day yours do, Monday unless you choose Sunday in your account’s settings. Hover over or tap a column for its figures, and click a day, week or month, or tap it twice, for the dashboard over just those dates, with the same filters. Today’s column is still being counted. Filtered by an entry or exit page, or by a goal, the chart shows days rather than hours.

Pages

The Pages pane has three tabs:

Entry and exit pages count visits that have ended, as bounce rate does. Beside the pane, the content drilldown counts pageviews folder by folder: click a folder to open it. The rest of the panes, and the full view each opens, are on Panes.

Hours

When your traffic comes, as a week of hours: a row for each day, from the day your weeks start on, and a square for each hour, midnight on the left. The darker the square, the more pageviews that hour had on an average day, so a range with five Mondays and four Sundays favours neither. Over a week or less it’s a row for each day of the range in order, the last at the bottom, so the last 7 days end on today. Over a single day it isn’t shown, since the chart has that day hour by hour. Hover over or tap a square for its pageviews, with the average and how many days it’s over.

The hours are in the site’s time zone. A blank square is an hour the range didn’t reach, such as the rest of today. Hours are counted from the first day in the range that was counted by the hour. Filtered by an entry or exit page, or by a goal, they aren’t available.

Days

Every day and hour is the site’s own, in the time zone its settings name. Today, the ranges and the chart’s columns all turn over at midnight there. See Sites to change it.

What is not counted