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Page views and time spent on page - bucketed

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Level 1

Hello!

I have a table in analytics where my dimensions are pages and I used page views (metrics) which I breakdown with time spent on page - bucketed (dimension). I don't understand why the page view total sum for every page is not the same total sum of page view for all the ranges within time spent on page. 

5 Replies

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Level 10

Hey Nataly,

It's not fully clear, could you share a screenshot?

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Level 5

Natalie,

I would expect that (Page Views - Exits) would be closer to the sum of the individuals rows of the time spent dimensions.

Time calculations within Adobe Analytics are (time of most recent event - [minus] time of prior event). 

If a user loads a page and then exits the site there isn't a second event to use in the calculation and no time is recorded for that page view.


I would recommend familiarizing yourself with the 'How Time Spent is Calculated' section of the Adobe help docs.
Time Spent

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Level 1

Thank you for the help,

I'm still trying to understand how time spent is calculated. I have as a dimension "exit page" which I break down with "time spent on page (bucketed)", and I have "page views" as a metric (because this time dimension only works with page views according to the document). I thought that using "exit page" or "exit" as metrics, time spent cannot be know (the same as bounces), therefore it shows "0" under bounces, but adobe analytics shows numbers when I use "exit page" or "exits" as metrics. Why can I see numbers using exit when “Seconds Spent” is the difference between the timestamp of the current hit and the timestamp of the next hit. As a result, the last hit of the visit (and bounces) have no time spent?

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Level 5

Two things to take into consideration

Exit pages have a visit breakdown scope, meaning they persist across all hits for a visit. When you use that dimension it is not considering just the last time the page value was set.

Second, from the documentation:

"In the case of props, time spent is counted across subsequent link events as well.""

This means that the last page of my visit may still have time added (lets say I watch a video on that page with tracked interactions, this would allow for a hit to use in the subtraction).

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Level 5

One other item of note.  If you are trying to identify 'the last page of the visit' for time purposes, the brilliant ursulab50161321​ shared that method here: Make it possible to segment on the hit of the exit page and entry page

If you then attempt to break down pages by time, with page views as your metric, I imagine you will see something like the below, where maybe a small percentage of your 'last pages' have a time shown:
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