Originally Posted by Jack Sparrow

But the fact remains, that the time on site is 0:00 so even it was misleading they wouldnt even be able to know because they didnt even see the site load.

Originally Posted by Question

We've been running Google Analytics on our main site for over a year now. I've noticed that everytime we have a visitor bounce, their time on the site is listed as '0:00'. At the analytics seminar I was recently at, they said that the time on site should be recorded, even if the visit is a bounce.

However, I'm finding that every bounce is showing up as no time spent on the site. I've looked everywhere for answers, but still haven't found anything. Does anyone have some advice for me? Thank you!

Originally Posted by Answer

The way that Google Analytics calculates average time on site is by subtracting the timestamps between the first and the last pageview of a visit. If a visitor to your site bounced, they by definition only had one pageview. Therefore it is impossible to calculate an average time on site for visitors that bounced because they did not have a second pageview. There is no way for Google Analytics to know exactly when a visitor left the site since no information is sent back to GA when the visitor closes their browser or navigates to a different site.

In the case a of a bounce, GA assigns a time on site of 0 seconds and then averages that in with the time on site for all other visitors that did not bounce to calculate an average time on the site.

Originally Posted by Later Answer

@ northbourne, a bounce (time on site of zero) is a visitor who had a single pageview and we don't know how long they physically stayed on that single page. They may have navigated away immediately or equally they may have stayed there for a long time scrolling around, reading, nodded off etc