TraceSessions
Browse individual visits — who came, where from, on what device, and every page and action in order.
What a session is
A session (or visit) is one visitor's run of activity on your site. It starts with their first pageview or event and keeps going as long as something happens at least every 30 minutes. After 30 minutes without an action, the next one starts a new session. Leaving a tab open doesn't keep a session alive on its own — the script's background "still here" pings don't count as activity.
A session keeps the source, location and device it started with, even if the visitor's IP or campaign changes halfway through. It's listed under the date range it started in, so a visit that runs past midnight appears on the first day only.
Bots aren't here
Visits from known crawlers never appear on this page. See Dashboard basics for how bots are kept apart.
Reading a session card
Each row is one session, newest first. From left to right:
| Part | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Visitor | The visitor's name if they've been identified (with an identified badge), otherwise a stable made-up name like "azure meadowlark" so you can tell anonymous visitors apart. Below it, when the session started — hover for how long ago. |
| Flag | The country the session started in. Hover for the city. |
| Device, OS, browser | Desktop, mobile or tablet, then the operating system and browser. |
| Source | The referring website (with its icon), or the channel — Direct, Organic Search, Paid Social, … — when there was no referrer. |
| Entry → exit | The first and last page of the visit. A visit that only viewed one page shows it once. |
| Counts | Pageviews, then one count per kind of action the visitor took: custom events, outbound link clicks, file downloads, form submits and payments. A kind that didn't happen is hidden. Hover any count for its name. |
| Duration | Time from the session's first action to its last. |
| Arrow | Opens or closes the session's timeline and details. Clicking anywhere else on the row does the same. |
Click to filter
The flag, device, OS, browser, source, entry page and exit page are all filters: click one to show only sessions that share it — for example, every visit from Germany, or every visit that came from a particular newsletter. The filter is added to the bar at the top, so the rest of the dashboard follows it when you switch pages. Click the same value again (it's highlighted while active) to remove it. A visit with no referrer filters by its channel.
Narrowing the list
The date range and filters at the top of the page work as everywhere else. The controls above the list narrow it further:
| Control | Shows only sessions… |
|---|---|
| Identified only | from visitors you've identified with window.datafast("identify", …) at any point — including their visits from before they signed in. |
| Min pageviews | with at least this many pageviews. |
| Min events | with at least this many actions other than pageviews (custom events, clicks, downloads, forms, payments, identify calls). |
| Min duration (s) | that lasted at least this many seconds, first action to last. |
Leave a box empty to turn it off. The list shows 50 sessions a page; use the arrows to page through. Changing a control, the range or a filter goes back to the first page.
The timeline
Open a session to see everything the visitor did, in order, with the time of each step. Pageviews link to the page as it was visited; outbound links and downloads link to where they pointed. Properties sent with an event appear under it.
- Type chips across the top count each kind of action. Click one to hide that kind — handy for a long visit full of custom events when you only want the page path.
- Time on page (the clock next to a pageview) runs from that pageview to the visit's next pageview. On the last page of a visit it runs to the last action taken there; if the visitor left without doing anything else, it's blank, because there's nothing to measure it against. Hiding a type never changes these times.
- Load more appears on visits with more than 100 actions and fetches the next 100.
- When a visit moves between hostnames (your blog and your app, say), each page shows its hostname too.
Time on page here vs. on the Pages report
The timeline measures the gap between actions, which is why the last page is often blank. The Pages report uses the script's engagement ping instead — how long the page was actually visible, sent when the visitor leaves it — so it covers last pages too, and the two won't match exactly.
If session replay recorded the visit, the session also has a Watch replay button.
Session info
The second tab lists everything recorded about the visit:
| Group | Fields |
|---|---|
| Visitor | Name, visitor ID (with a copy button), user ID and email once identified, browser language, the visitor's own timezone, and location (city, region, country). |
| Device | Device type, operating system, browser and screen size. |
| Source | Channel, referring site and the full referring URL, and the UTM source, medium, campaign and term the visit arrived with. |
| Visit | Session ID, start and last activity, duration, hostname, entry page and exit page. |
Language, timezone, screen size and UTM tags come from the first event of the visit that reported them. A dash means the browser didn't send it. View user opens the visitor's profile with all of their sessions.
FAQ
Why does a session show 0s?
It had a single action — usually one pageview and then nothing. Duration is measured between actions, so a one-action visit (a bounce) has none, however long the tab stayed open.
Why are there two sessions from the same visitor close together?
More than 30 minutes passed between two of their actions, so the second one started a new session. Both appear on the visitor's profile.
Why is the same person listed under different names?
Anonymous names belong to a browser, not a person: the same visitor on their phone and laptop is two visitors until you identify them. After an identify call, their sessions on that browser show their real name.
Why does the events count not match the timeline?
The card only counts actions a visitor takes. Identify calls are part of the timeline (and of Min events) but don't get a count of their own on the card.
Can I find one specific visit?
Filter by what you know about it — the country, the page they landed on, the referrer or a custom property — and narrow the date range. For a signed-in user, open them from the Users page to see only their sessions.