How is countVisit calculated against a user?

Question

I am trying to find user behavior on our community since launch on HL vanilla platform and unable to understand how count visit is calculated. I see a user who has count visit 0 and yet has a discussion created on the community. Does 0 means the first time user came to the community?

Shauna · Answer

hey @Jocelyn

This article might be useful:

https://success.vanillaforums.com/kb/articles/123-how-site-visits-are-determined

Visits are a "fuzzy statistic" that can't ever be 100% accurate because we have no way of knowing whether a person is actively using their device. With that said, a visit is calculated when a user is "away from the site" for at least 20 minutes, meaning:

If the user closes the site, they will be considered away so the next time they browse to the site a new visit may be incremented.

If the user leaves the site open in their browser, they will be considered away if the site isn't their active tab. This is to account for users who may have a long post open for more than 20 minutes. If you leave your browser open over night, you likely won't trigger a new visit.

This methodology is a heuristic that attempts to balance accuracy against the reality that people often leave browser tabs open for hours or even days at a time.

Jocelyn · Answer

Can someone please help me with this question?