[simonw]

I'm very skeptical of that 43 minutes number. It doesn't make sense as a sum-of-all-time number, but it also doesn't make sense as a average-time number either.

I'd like to hear from Plausible about what that's meant to mean, because as it is I've been ignoring it as possibly a data collection bug of some sort.

[patshead]

I never have much trust in the time on page or time on site numbers. In your screenshot, the number sure looks like it is meant to be a total.

I use Matomo for my analytics. I think their little Javascript doodad attempts to report back time information after 15 seconds. Anyone who clicks away before that timer goes off is recorded as a zero.

I get a sort of warm fuzzy feeling when I see high time on page numbers, but zeroes never bother me. There are a huge number of reasons why a time can't be captured, but when a time is captured, it is almost definitely someone who had eyeballs on your page.

You're doing a good job, Simon! I would be thrilled to see a million clicks from Twitter on one of my posts. I am just more excited about your 50k clicks from Hacker News!

[snowwrestler]

> Time on Page

> The average time people spend on a particular page on your site. This is calculated as the difference between the point when a person lands on a particular page and when they move on to the next page.

https://plausible.io/docs/metrics-definitions#time-on-page

[shanebellone]

"I use Matomo for my analytics. I think their little Javascript doodad attempts to report back time information after 15 seconds. Anyone who clicks away before that timer goes off is recorded as a zero."

Why in the world do they measure time on page like that? All they need to do is compare timestamps between hits...

[patshead]

There isn't always a second hit.