Google analytics session count wrong for mobile (iOS & Android)

Question

We have Google analytics set-up for iOS and Android (also we run it on our web) and it is recording screen views and user counts correctly but not the session count.

iOS

• Users: 39,165
• Sessions: 4,123,544
• Screen Views: 5,969,818

Android

• Users: 5,853
• Sessions: 669,675
• Screen Views: 901,164

Our implementation of Google Analytics seems to be pretty much out of the box.

GAI.SharedInstance.DefaultTracker.Set (GAIConstants.ScreenName, pageName);
GAI.SharedInstance.DefaultTracker.Send (GAIDictionaryBuilder.CreateAppView ().Build ());

With the settings:

GAI.SharedInstance.DispatchInterval = 20;
GAI.SharedInstance.TrackUncaughtExceptions = false; //We use another 3rd party

On iOS we are using the latest version of google analytics and on Android we are using the latest version for ICS.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Google Analytics' session calculating is based on interaction from the user. If the user clicks, the session gets a heartbeat. If the user is watching a movie (eg) it wont be interacting with your application and the session stops.

Check out these pages to learn more about time calculation in Google Analytics, which helped me understanding the session calculations inside Google Analytics: http://cutroni.com/blog/2012/02/29/understanding-google-analytics-time-calculations/ http://cutroni.com/blog/2012/02/23/advanced-content-tracking-with-google-analytics-part-2/

It's based on web, but it just gave me more insights.

After all, to fix your problem, you should manage your session manually. This fixed the problem for me. You can find my detailed implementation right here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/26882024/1485701