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The dashboard

Reading your numbers: intervals, comparisons, timezones, and every breakdown explained.

The layout

A site's overview reads top to bottom: the headline totals (visitors, pageviews, bounce rate, average visit), the traffic chart, then the breakdowns: pages, sources, geography, devices and custom events. Every number answers the range picked in the header, and every breakdown is the same range cut a different way.

Ranges and comparisons

  • The interval picker covers today, yesterday, the last 7 and 30 days, month and year views, 6 and 12 months, and All time (anchored at your site's first event).
  • Comparisons show the preceding equal-length period beside the current one, so a delta is always against something concrete.
  • The chart picks its own grain honestly: hours for a day, days for a month, ISO weeks for 6 and 12 months. Weekly unique visitors are merged server-side, never summed from days, so uniques stay true.

Whose clock cuts the day

Charts follow your account timezone (or your browser's, until you pick one), so Today means your today. Widgets and public share pages have their own rules; the timezones page lays out all three clocks.

Sessions and engagement

A session is rebuilt server-side with a 30-minute inactivity rule; bounce rate and average visit duration come from it. Engagement time is measured with two clocks (visible time, and active time near a real interaction), so a tab parked in the background does not inflate anything.

Freshness

Events typically land in charts within seconds. When the chip in the corner says Catching up, the pipeline is behind and the charts are honest about it; a site with no traffic simply shows its last visit's age. For the current moment, the realtime view is the faster surface.