Zero second visitors

[suemchenry]

Would it be possible to eliminate the "zero second" visitors from the statcounter and from the list as an option? In my particular situation, if people pop in and out without reading anything, then they don't really "count" in my assessment of my site. Other's might feel differently, which is why making it an option would be good. Thanks. Sue

[Arne]

Well, since you have a lot of content on the front page of the blog, I belive most visitors may stay on that page for a lot more time than 5 sek. The only reason the stats show them as "zero second" visitors, is that they don't go to any of the other pages on your site.

The time spent on a page can only be calculated as the time from entering "page 1" to the entering of "page 2". So my view of the "zero second" visitors is that they do really "count" just as much as any other visitor.

[suemchenry]

I had no idea that was the case. Thanks for the explanation.

[oolong]

Speaking of 0-length visitors though, they *are* rather unhelpful in calculating the average length of a visit to the site. What I would really like would be an option (I suppose it should be optional) to exclude them from this calculation, and get an average length for visitors *with more than one page load*.

Cheers!

- Oolong

[Arne]

Originally Posted by oolong

Speaking of 0-length visitors though, they *are* rather unhelpful in calculating the average length of a visit to the site. What I would really like would be an option (I suppose it should be optional) to exclude them from this calculation, and get an average length for visitors *with more than one page load*.

I'll guess that could be done. But look at it this way. If you have a lot of 0-length visitors, you may ask your self why don't they stay longer (visit any other page) on your site. Is'nt that what you really want? If a site is of little interest for some visitors, hiding their 0 sec visits will not make it more interesting or increase the amount of visitors

The 0-length visitors can be a indication that you need to do something (improve) to make them more interested. If they only come to your main page, you could try to add something that would make them clicking on a link to at least one other page so the time can be calculated

[oolong]

Hi Arne,

That's as may be - however, I would suggest that excluding 0-length visits from the stats would result in a much more accurate figure - since even single-page-load visitors visit *one* page, they obviously spend *some* time on the site.

The best available guess (though it may not be a good one) would be that they'll average as long on that one page as other people do on each page between page loads. An alternative to excluding 0-length visitors from the average visit length would be to add the average gap between page loads to each visit, and calculate from there (effectively, assuming that each visitor looks at one more page than we can count time for - which is true, of course, although it could be misleading). It would be easier to exclude 0-length visits from the stats though.

For what it's worth, while I do *like* people visiting more than one page, in some cases it's okay with me if they don't. I consider some of my pages to be more important than others - and some lead to pages which I can't track, for instance my Cafepress shops, or my Everything2 writeups.

- f.