For most web analytics tools the session that starts when you visit the site continues for 29 minutes of inactivity. So you come, you see a few pages, your leave (lets say this is minute 5) and you come back ten mins later then your session continues. Let’s say you click on another page and then go away then as long as you come back in less than 29 mins your session will continue.

Some tools, a few, will terminate your session as long as you click on a link and leave. So you were on http://www.pricegrabber.com and click on a link to go to officemax.com then your session will be closed. If you come back again in a minute then a new session starts (resulting higher “visits” to the site).

A couple of tools typically behave as in scenario one above but they have one exception. If you exit to a search engine and/or come back to the same site via a search engine then they terminate the session. So you type in “avinash”, come to http://www.kaushik.net/avinash, don’t see what you want, go back to google and type in “avinash speaking engagements” and come back to the site (this time landing on my speaking engagements page) then that will be two sessions.

So there are all the nuances. Lesson: check with your vendor.

Hope this helps.

Avinash.

:)

Only disappointment so far is that it does not give a clear definition for a page view. For instance, when presenting a Google map with points of interest(POI), does a map scroll with a refreshed set of POI count as a page view?

Keep up the good work

Angie: Think of “Copyright” as “Right to Copy”. If it helps, substitute “DVD of the Movie XYZ” for “Document”. If you can legally share part of a DVD Movie, or the whole thing? You’re in the clear, re. this document. If you can’t… well you (probably) can’t share the document as you describe. :-)
To be horribly simplistic about the whole legal edifice (and then some…) around copyright.

In essence I have *NO* Right to Copy, except for that granted to me under (Australian) copyright law. UNLESS the WAA deliberately chooses to apply looser Right to Copy provisions for the Document.

Which also opens up a whole can of worms of it’s own:

Being definitions, you want them kept inviolate and somewhat whole. The WAA would also have a perfectly valid reason for being seen as the Owner/Creator of the definitions.

I guess the question becomes: What is the purpose of the definitions?

An oversight I’m quite sure, but “Why?” seems to be missing from the 1st paragraph of the document. ;-) “How?” is there, but not “Why?”. If you’re at all like me, the intro is written last. ;-)

Again, my thanks for your efforts!!!!!

Cheers!
- Steve

Natuurlijk hebben ze ook aan de kenners gevraagd wat ze van dit document vinden. Avinash, WAA board member en auteur van “Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.” zegt: “The hard work and dedication from the WAA, the participation from the analytics community and the resulting 26 definitions are truly a sign of the maturity of the industry. The market for analytics tools is booming and, with increased interest from all areas of online marketing, these standards benefit both the users and practitioners and will only accelerate the advancement of the analytics industry.”

Download hier de nieuwe definitielijst van de 26 metrics in PDF. Andere posts over dit onderwerp op Marketingfacts en blog van Avinash. [...]

angie

Under Aussie law, the rules are not so much for a given “percentage” of a work, rather if the infringement is over a substantial part. Given that the docco in question is WA Definitions, it logically follows that the definitions are a “substantial part”.
One could argue they’re the whole point!

See here for more of a heads up:
http://www.ag.gov.au/www/agd/agd.nsf/Page/Copyright#16
“Can I copy 10%…”

Solutions?
There are several. One of the biggest issues to overcome is allowing reproduction in any medium without actually changing the definitions themselves.

Possibly the easiest is to look at the Creative Commons pre-built licenses.
http://creativecommons.org/

Pick an “Attribution”; “No Derivative Works” license over the actual definitions you’ve extracted above. For example.
Something similar for the actual docco itself.

HTH? Cheers!
- Steve
PS I tried for “shorter” on this comment. :-P

On a serious note though this seems to be a concern from others (who have emailed me). I am going to bring this to the board’s attention and bring back a official point of view.

I was not trying to break the law by copying the definitions here, I wanted to make sure lots of people get exposure to them. I am hopeful that the WAA is very supportive of the use of materials contained in the document (with clear citations).

But law is the law and it should be respected.

Thanks for the feedback.

-Avinash.

1. What are the distribution rights on this document? From what I can see the document is a normal document: copyrighted to the WAA itself and hence the usual copyright laws kick in.
ie. I can’t, legally, hand around/distribute copies. :-)

2. Ditto the definitions themselves. This is perhaps the more vexing issue. In that while I totally support the idea of having standard definitions, if I can’t copy them into, eg. my product documentation and so on; then I can’t use them and hence spread them. Thus having standard definitions is of no use to me *anyway*. :-(

“Fair Use” has different meanings in different countries. IANAL, but my understanding of *Australian* copyright law would mean that it is illegal to copy the definitions themselves as Avinash has done above. USA law is different, so don’t go locking Avinash up…. yet! ;-)

3. I have no idea if such exists already, but is there any scope for having these definitions be formally adopted as an ISO, or equivalent, international standard?

Speaking as someone who was a rep on a Standards Australia committee many many years ago, I perhaps have an inbuilt bias towards the formally approved standards. Yes it can be a fluffy tick only, but it does also lend weight in minds and perceptions.

Such experience also means that I really appreciate just how much work goes into writing these documents. Well Done All concerned!!!!

4. I ask because I have to be a PITA at least once a day. And because I note from the doc properties that Avinash did the PDF conversion ;-) (Ghostscript? I find Ooo does a pretty good job fwiw). Any chance of an A4 version vs US Letter?

Cheers, and again well done. Now to read the 34! pages in detail.
- Steve