Why do the metrics on the Orbee Platform and Google Analytics not match up?

There are a few reasons why the metrics on both the Orbee Platform and Google Analytics do not match. 

Bounce Rate

  • On Google Analytics, they count a visitor in the bounce rate when they do not visit more than one page on your website
  • On the Orbee Platform, we consider the user in the bounce rate if they enter the website and leave within twenty seconds.
    • If a visitor completes a conversion on your website, we no longer include that visitor in the bounce rate

Incoming Traffic

  • The Orbee Platform tracks all traffic. We do not actively track bots, but we do track all traffic that comes to your website. 
    • The exception to this is when we set specific IP addresses (Orbee's, your car dealership's, etc.) to not show up in the analytical data
    • In Google Analytics, you may have bot traffic filtering enabled, so it will significantly change the metrics

Time Spent vs. Session Duration

  • Orbee's average time spent and Google Analytics' average session duration will be different. 
    • The Orbee tracker and Google Analytics tracker ingests data in different ways so the data will also have differences. Because of this, it will affect the number of visits versus sessions as well.
    • Google Analytics' sessions end after 30 minutes of inactivity. If a user begins a session after the 30 minutes of inactivity, it will be counted as two separate sessions.
    • Orbee's visit tracker determines whether a user has ended a visit as soon as they close their browser or browser tab. The visitor can be inactive but come back at a later time to continue their browsing. This is why the average time spent differs from average session duration on Google Analytics. 
      • A user will be checked for inactivity every 10 seconds and will increase to up to every 5 minutes until the user becomes active again, of which it will return to checking for inactivity for every ten seconds. For example, if a user is inactive for 20 minutes, we will check their inactivity not as often as every 10 seconds due to the bandwidth. 

Last Updated: June 12, 2020 12:15 PM

If you have any other questions regarding the differences between the Orbee Platform and Google Analytics, please contact an Orbee representative.