I studied the definitions of session metric and session_start event in GA4 documents. it mentioned that every time a session starts a session_start event is counting, but comparing session metrics in reports and session_start event count I get two significantly different values. can anyone explain to me how these two are different?
Can anyone explain how session_start event count in GA4 is different from session metric?
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1 Answers
The metrics are different.
When you select a period and ask to count sessions, every hit with a unique session id counts as a session.
When you do the same, but ask for session starts, only starts will count.
Basically, you should always see more sessions than starts. Rarely will you be able to see equal numbers there. Also, the difference should remain approximately the same number regardless of the time window size.
You can read here more on definitions.
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