Sessions per user = sessions ÷ users
6,300 ÷ 4,200 = 1.5
When does one visit end and the next begin?
A session starts when someone views a page and no session is already running for them. It ends after 30 minutes with nothing happening, which is the default, and you can change it in the web data stream's tag settings (Google Analytics Help, About Analytics sessions). There is no upper limit on how long a session can last. Someone who browses for an hour without a 30-minute gap is one session.
Step away for 35 minutes to make lunch, then come back to the same tab, and GA4 starts a second session. That is the rule working as designed, and it is why sessions usually run ahead of users.
Why can one person be counted as two users?
GA4 recognises the browser, not the person. Unless people sign in to your website and you send GA4 their ID, each browser on each device gets its own identity, stored in a cookie. A customer who looks on a phone at lunch and buys on a laptop that night is two users. Clear the cookies, or browse in a private window, and the same laptop becomes a new user. People who decline cookies or block the tag may not be counted at all.
So users are an estimate of reach, and usually an overcount of people. That does not make them useless. The trend is reliable even when the exact figure is not.
What does one weekend look like to a Toowoomba garden centre's analytics? (example figures)
A garden centre in Toowoomba sells plants in store and takes click-and-collect orders on its website. One customer's spring weekend:
| When | What the customer did | What GA4 records |
|---|---|---|
| Saturday 8:10 am, phone | Clicks a Meta ad, looks at roses for 10 minutes | User 1, session 1 |
| Saturday 9:05 am, phone | Comes back to check the opening hours | User 1, session 2 |
| Sunday 7:30 pm, laptop | Searches the centre's name, orders three roses for collection | User 2, session 3, a purchase |
One customer, two users, three sessions, one sale. Across the month, GA4 shows 4,200 users, 3,100 of them new, and 6,300 sessions. The centre's own records show about 900 people bought online or collected, which no GA4 figure on that list would have told it.
The useful reading is by channel. Sessions from Meta, from Google search and from email, each set against the purchases that followed, show where visits come from and which of them turn into orders. A rising user count with flat purchases says more people are arriving and not buying, which is a question for the website before the ad budget.
Does CoraVision count sessions or users?
Visits: CoraVision reads visits by channel from Google Analytics 4 every night once it is connected, along with key events, purchases and revenue, so the visits each channel sends sit next to what those visits produced. Cora reads them as GA4 counts them: visits from browsers that loaded the tag, which makes them an estimate of people.
Questions
Is a session the same as a visit?
For most purposes, yes. Session is Google Analytics' word for one visit, with a precise rule for where it starts and ends, and most people use the two words interchangeably. The rule only comes into play when someone pauses for half an hour and comes back.
Active users or total users: which one does GA4 show?
Total users counts every browser that sent GA4 anything in the period. Active users counts the ones that engaged, and it is the figure GA4's reports show when they say users (Google Analytics Help, user metrics). The gap is mostly the people who arrived and left at once.
Why does GA4 show fewer visitors than my web host's statistics?
Your host counts every request to the server, including search engine robots and people whose browsers block the Google tag or who declined cookies. GA4 counts only the visits where its tag ran. Neither figure is the exact number of people, so pick one source and follow its trend.