Views in Metrica: what they are and how to work with them. Yandex Metrica: What is View, Visit, Visitor, Conversion and Rejection What is the difference between visits and views

The difference between a visit and a visitor in Yandex Metrics is closely related to the difference between returning and unique visitors.

I will quote the official certificate from metrika.yandex.ru:

Visit— the sequence of actions of one visitor on the site (on one counter). The visit is completed if some time has passed between the visitor's actions on the site. Default is 30 minutes. You can specify a different time using the visit timeout option.
Visitor- a user who visited the site within a certain period of time. A visitor is considered unique if it has a non-repeating set of characteristics (IP address, browser, OS, cookies, etc.). In case of clearing cookies, reinstalling the browser or reinstalling the operating system, the visitor is considered new.

From the point of view of a person not familiar with the metric, this may seem confusing, so let's keep it simple.

Let's say you own a modest donut shop. And within an hour, 10 people entered it. 9 of them came in once, and the tenth came in twice and took a second portion of donuts for home.

So, it turns out that 10 people visited your store 11 times. And in this example:

• every person is a visitor,
• and every visit is a visit.

It's simple, isn't it?

As you already understand, the number of visits cannot be greater than the number of visitors. However, if the number of visits is equal to or too close to the number of visitors - perhaps your donuts are not that good if people are not coming back to you for repeat orders?

I make these analogies for a reason. The more the number of visits prevails over the number of visitors, the better your audience core is formed. And in this case, “quality donuts” are high-quality and interesting content, usability, unique services, and so on.

Visit timeout - what is it?

There are some peculiarities in recording visits using metrics. There is such a thing as a visit timeout.

It affects how the metric will divide the visit into visits. Let's say you found a very interesting and useful article by opening it in your browser. From this moment on, Yandex Metrica counted your visit to this article as a visit. If you decide to read it in an hour, without closing it and working on other tabs, then your reading will create a second visit.

The point here is that the metric divides the visit into different visits if the activity on the page was interrupted (to be more precise, if the session was interrupted). By default, this visit timeout is 30 minutes. It can be changed in the metric settings.

It is also important that Yandex divides the visit into visits even if there was a transition through a Yandex Direct advertisement, even if the previous session was not completed. This was done to correctly count transitions from contextual advertising.

Where can I see statistics of visits and visitors in Yandex Metrica?

The metric provides powerful statistics on visitors and visits. They are especially useful when

Unique visitors in metrics (metrika.yandex.ru) is a statistical indicator closely related to returning visitors.

Unique visitor - a “non-repeating” visitor visiting the site during a certain period of time.

It's a stranger at your door! But this stranger can become your friend if you accept him correctly 😉

The Yandex Metrica interface also uses the term “new visitor”.

Quote from the Yandex Metrica help:

A user who has visited the site within a certain period of time. A visitor is considered unique if it has a non-repeating set of characteristics (IP address, browser, OS, cookies, etc.). In case of clearing cookies, reinstalling the browser or reinstalling the operating system, the visitor is considered new.

Let me explain in more detail what this means.

Cookies are a set of specific characters that the server installs in the user’s browser, to put it very simply.

This set of symbols allows you to track many indicators of user behavior, including his repeated returns to the site. This is done through the mechanism of transmitting cookies from the server to the browser and back. If you once visited a site with Yandex metrics installed, then your browser already has this information. And if you visit that same site again, the metric will determine that you are no longer a unique visitor, but a returning one.

However, the metric can also be “deceived”. And you can do this very easily.

For this it is enough:

• access the Internet through another provider;
• if the IP address is dynamic (there is no fixed address) - often it is enough to simply restart the computer;
• log in from another browser;
• remove and reinstall your browser;
• clear cookies through browser settings;
• reinstall the operating system.

Thus, returning and unique visitors are connected in such a way that:

UNIQUE = ALL VISITORS ARE RETURNING

As practice shows, it is enough to do one of these actions for your visit to the site to be considered unique in terms of metrics.

What determines the number of unique visitors to a website?

Main dependency on:

• traffic sources (including the presence of paid sources);
• site topics.

Of course, the ratio between “uniques” and “returnees” depends on the topic.

It is easier to retain an audience on an entertainment portal than on a commercial site.

There is also a certain correlation between unique visitors and traffic sources. Thus, the bulk of repeat visits occur through direct visits, social networks and e-mail newsletters.

The main generator of new visitors is the results of “site promotion”: search traffic, contextual advertising, as well as the spread of viral content through social networks.

Keep in mind that Yandex Metrica does not take into account all unique visitors. Some users (including me) use metrics blockers like this:

With such a blocker, my visit is not displayed at all in Yandex Metrica of the site owner.

How to increase the number of unique visitors in the metric?

If in order to earn a permanent audience, you need to work on usability or the quality of content, then to get “uniques” this is very desirable, but not necessary.

It’s enough to have a lot of money and spend it on advertising: context, target, teasers, reference...

But, of course, this is not effective and even carries high risks.

Let me explain. Even if you send paid traffic to an inconvenient site, you won’t win anything. Only get higher bounce rates. In the future, this will hit the search engine optimization of the site (failures are a powerful behavioral factor).

If you invest a lot of money in links and almost nothing in usability and content, you will most likely get search engine filters (like Minusinsk).

Therefore, to increase the number of unique visits, distribute your budget evenly across:

• convenient design;
• interesting and in-depth articles, videos, photos - content that you want to share;
• interesting services for users;
• competent construction of the site’s link profile (for search engine optimization);
• development of official accounts of your website on social networks.

And under no circumstances try to recruit unique visitors with “bots”!

Where can I view analytics on unique visitors?

Already in the summary of the Yandex Metrica service you can see the “New Visitors” widget next to the “Visitors” widget (see the picture above). And based on this data, we can draw conclusions about the ratio of “new” and “old” users.

If you have an informer installed on your website from yandex.metrika.ru, you can find out the number of new visits more clearly:

On the “Webvisor” tab you can see whether a specific visit was made by a unique visitor or a returning visitor. “Unique” in the “visit number” column has the number “1”.

On the Reports - Standard reports - Sources - Sources, summary page you can find a breakdown of all traffic sources.

The “Visitors” column here is nothing more than unique users:

How does this relate to unique visitors?

If you are experiencing an unreasonable surge in traffic on your website, check to see if your competitors are driving up visits to you. This can have a detrimental effect on your site.

I hope this article was useful to you. Ask your questions in the comments.

It is necessary to distinguish between “Views” (), “Visits” (), “Visitors” ().

What is the difference between a visit and a visitor?

What are "Visitors"

The “Visitors” column shows the number of unique visitors during the reporting period. A visitor (human or bot) is considered unique if it has a unique set of characteristics (IP address, browser, OS, cookies, etc.).

Why from 01/01/2000 to 01/03/2000 the number of unique visitors is 1? — Because both 01/01/2000 and 01/02/2000 there was the same visitor on the site. If you make three reports for each day, then it will be taken into account as a unique one in two of them. If you draw up a report for the period from 01/01/2000 to 01/03/2000, then it will be taken into account as a unique one.

What are "New Visitors"

The “New Visitors” column shows the number of unique visitors during the reporting period who have not previously appeared on the site. If you make a report for the entire time the counter has been operating, the numbers in the “Visitors” and “New Visitors” columns will be the same.

What are "Visits"

During the reporting period, a visitor can make several visits. His departure from the site does not interrupt the visit. The visit ends when some time has passed between the visitor’s actions (following links, clicking buttons, moving the mouse) on the site. The default is 30 minutes. This time can be changed using the “Visit timeout in minutes” option (see “Settings” - “Basic”)

What are "Internal Referrals" in "Traffic Source"

: Internal transitions are recorded if the user's activity on the site is interrupted for a longer period of time than specified in the visit timeout, but the user does not close the browser window. After activity resumes, a new user “visit” is created, for which this type will be specified as the source.

Bounce rate per visit

A visit to Yandex.Metrica is considered if the following conditions are simultaneously met:

• During the visit, only 1 page view was recorded;
• the duration of the visit is less than 15 seconds (the time can be changed in the meter code).

Difference between visitors and views

What are "Views"

The indicator itself is not very interesting in statistics. We need more to understand how many pages on average are viewed by one visitor. In Yandex.Metrica you can’t calculate anything, since there is an indicator “View depth”.

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View depth in Metrica is the number of pages a user views on a website during one visit.

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Why is it important for a website owner to know the viewing depth?

Yandex is interested in providing correct answers to user questions. He needs useful and informative resources. For example, a user sees 10 sites for one request. He will visit them one by one until he finds useful information. It is the site on which he stops that has moved to various sections that is useful for both the person and Yandex. Such a resource will appear more often as a result of certain requests.

That’s why browsing depth is one of the behavioral factors that influence a site’s ranking in search results. It is not the main one, but it is still necessary to take it into account.

How to find out browsing depth using Yandex. Metrics

This tool is one of the most popular among all similar services. Its interface is simple, and the reports are accurate and understandable. For Metrica to start analyzing your website, you need to install a counter on it. After this, you can look at the reports, we won’t write about them in detail here, if you want more information, read, in it the Metrics reports are sorted into sections.

Metrica has a separate report called “View Depth”. It's very easy to find. Go to Standard Reports – – View Depth

The system will give you the necessary data:

You can also sort indicators in the reports, for example, find viewing depth data for men from large cities. This feature can be useful for analyzing the behavior of target visitors.

View depth in Yandex Metrica is one of the indicators that indicates the usefulness of information in various sections of the site. It can also be used to judge how convenient the navigation on the site is. For example, if you have a high number of clicks to your landing page but a low click-through rate, it's likely due to poor navigation or design errors. Find out at what stage the user leaves the page, analyze this information and try to understand why this happens. Having trouble finding the right section in the menu? Is the font too small or translucent? Internal links in texts are not highlighted, which is why the user does not know that they are clickable? Or maybe it's due to an overabundance of advertising and pop-ups?

The Webvisor tool from the already mentioned Yandex will help you monitor user behavior on the site. Metrics. It records visits, with its help you can look at your resource through the eyes of the user and follow his path. This will help you quickly find an error, come up with a solution to the problem, fix it and increase your viewing depth.

The viewing depth in the metric is an indicator of the metrika.yandex.ru service, reflecting the number of web pages that a user views per visit, as well as the average indicator for the number of pages viewed per visit over a certain period of time.

Simply put, browsing depth reflects how many URLs a user has gone through when visiting a website.

If the user went through five pages, then it will be equal to 5 for his single visit. If the second visitor visited only one page, then it will be equal to 3 (on average) for these two users.

Why is this factor important?

This is one of the most important behavioral factors that can be taken into account when ranking a page for topical keywords. Accordingly, the depth of transitions can directly affect the results of website promotion in search engines, namely, organic traffic from search engines.

In addition, it can affect the monetization of the site. If you receive money from YAN advertising (Yandex advertising network), Google Adsense or teasers, your earnings directly depend on how deeply the user views the pages.

What viewing depth can be considered a good indicator?

For a factor such as site browsing depth, a good indicator is a relative concept. The theme of the site is of great importance.

Agree that users will behave completely differently in different topics. If, for example, we talk about a taxi service or urgent medical services, the viewing depth will be minimal. After all, you also don’t go through a dozen pages if you urgently need to move from point A to point B? You see a phone number on the website and just call it. That is why in the taxi topic the number of views barely exceeds one page.

You can see a typical situation with a taxi service website in the picture (service from Moscow):

If we take one of the entertainment topics, then the depth here will, as a rule, be greater.

Therefore, to evaluate this criterion on your website, you need to take indicators not “on average for the hospital,” but exclusively on your topic. And ideally, data on specific keywords.

How can you find out the approximate indicators in your subject area?

You can ask this question on thematic webmaster forums. I am sure there will be good people who will share this (and other) information. No one will give you statistics on individual keywords, but on the topic - easily.

You can use a more accurate and cunning method - there is special software that searches for open Yandex Metrics and other analytics systems 😉

Therefore, it is not worth arguing that a small number of views is bad in any case.

Let's also imagine the situation that the content on your page satisfies the user's need as much as possible. He comes from the search to your page and solves his question, but does not return back to the search. After all, this is just an ideal situation. This is something that search engines should encourage, right? And in this case, the norm for viewing depth will be a small indicator.

Of course, a one-page landing page will also have a low viewing depth. At the same time, it can have a high conversion rate and be very effective. Where will the views come from if there is nowhere to go?

How to increase the depth of site browsing?

Of course, the greater the viewing depth, the better, as a general rule. Therefore, you need to work on increasing the depth of views.

Here are just a few activities that can improve this metric:

• competent internal linking (links from the page text to other pages)
• clear site navigation
• the site design is conducive to working with it
• adding blocks of information with links to materials that reveal additional details (for example, blocks in the sidebar or at the bottom of the article)
• A “classic” link style is desirable—blue and underlined (we don’t mask links!).

There are also some artificial ways to increase this indicator, for which, however, they do not yet give pessimization.

So, if you have a section on your website where you can download some documents, you don’t have to provide a direct link to the document. Walk the user through a page or two of pads before they have the opportunity to download the file. The main thing is to correctly assess the user’s motivation to receive the file. And don't make him feel manipulated. Many file hosting services use a similar strategy.

How to view viewing depth in Yandex Metrica?

Firstly, it appears in the summary (on the “home page” of the Yandex Metrica service).

I’m posting here my test project with traffic, which I don’t particularly mind.

Here you can see the depth indicator for views not only per day, but also for any period of time, for example, per month.

You can see the viewing rate of individual visitors on the "Webvisor" menu tab. Here the number of views is indicated for each visit.

The Metrics menu section is very important:

Reports - Standard reports - Visitors - View depth.

Here you can see the number of visitors, including %, who view a certain number of pages.

In addition, in this report you can apply segmentation and, for example, evaluate the depth of views for women in cities with a population of over a million. This can be quite useful in assessing the behavior of your target audience.

Similarly, you can look at the number of views in general by gender.

It is very important to track view depth metrics in reports on display resolutions and other technologies.

For example, a report on the presence or absence of JavaScript in the user’s browser is very indicative.

So, views that are significantly different from the average should lead you to believe that users are experiencing certain inconveniences (for example, links or buttons on a mobile phone screen are too small). To find the reason, you need to test the site on different devices, monitor behavior using the web viewer, and track the dynamics of indicators.

Of course, it is impossible to cover all the subtleties in one article. Ask questions in the comments and write to me.