With Traffic Getting Harder to Track, These GA4 Metrics Are the Ones to Trust

With attribution getting harder to trust, and search traffic dying thanks to AI and zero-click results, we need to start focusing on what we can control: what happens on our site. That’s where Google’s engagement metrics come in.

A Brief History of Engagement Metrics

For years, Google Analytics relied on bounce rate, pages per session, and average session duration as the primary way to gauge whether people were engaging with content on your website. But these metrics were never great. Bounce rate was often misinterpreted. Time on site had major accuracy gaps. And pageviews said little about what a user actually did.

With GA4, Google introduced a new class of metrics designed to capture active sessions and interactions more accurately. Instead of measuring what someone didn’t do (like bounce rate), GA4’s engagement metrics focus on what they did do.

These engagement metrics aren’t just new names—they represent a shift in how we understand user behavior. And in a digital world where fewer people are clicking and attribution keeps getting murkier, these metrics are more important than ever.

What Is an Engaged User?

GA4 introduced a new concept: the engaged user. You are considered an engaged user if you:

• Spend 10 seconds or more on the site
• View at least 2 pages or screens
• Trigger a conversion event

It’s a simple definition, and that’s the point. It gives us a clear way to spot visits that actually show interest. (Source)

“…when attribution is unreliable, the real value is in what happens on your site. These metrics show you what visitors do once they arrive, and that might be the most honest and useful data we have left.“

Engagement Metrics vs Traditional Google Analytics Metrics: Understanding the Difference

GA4’s engagement metrics may sound familiar, but they’re fundamentally different in how they work—and what they prioritize—compared to the traditional metrics we’ve used for years. Here’s how similar metrics compare within GA4:

Average Engagement Time vs. Average Session Duration

Both metrics are available in GA4, but they measure time very differently.

• Average Session Duration tracks the total time from when a session starts to when it ends, based on the time between events. If a user visits one page and doesn’t trigger another event, the session may be recorded as having zero duration—even if they spent several minutes reading. Sessions also automatically time out after 30 minutes of inactivity, which can further skew the accuracy.
  
• Average Engagement Time only includes time when the user is actively engaging with your site—scrolling, clicking, watching a video, or interacting in some way. It excludes idle time, giving a clearer picture of actual attention, but it’s still tied to sessions. Like other session-based metrics, it stops counting after 30 minutes of inactivity, so long gaps between interactions aren’t included.
  
  In short: Session Duration tells you how long the session lasted on paper. Engagement Time tells you how long the user was actually engaged.

Engaged Sessions per User vs. Sessions per User

• Sessions per User simply counts how often someone visited your site, regardless of what they did during those visits.
  
• Engaged Sessions per User adds a layer of quality by only counting sessions that meet Google’s engagement criteria. It reflects how often users are truly interacting with your content, not just showing up.

It’s the difference between measuring traffic volume and measuring meaningful traffic.

Engagement Rate vs. Bounce Rate

• You can still find bounce rate in GA4, but it’s been redefined—and more importantly, it’s no longer a focal point. It measures the percentage of sessions that didn’t meet the engagement threshold (no conversion, fewer than two pageviews, and under 10 seconds on site) and left the website.
  
• Engagement Rate represents the inverse. It measures the percentage of sessions where users showed signs of interest—stayed longer, explored deeper, or took action. It’s more constructive, more behavior-based, and better aligned with how users browse today.

Still miss the old bounce rate? Just invert your engagement rate. If your site has a 60% engagement rate, that means 40% of sessions were unengaged—and that’s your bounce rate. (Source)

Final Thoughts

We’re entering a phase of marketing where you can’t rely on clean funnels and clear attribution. People discover your brand all sorts of ways, through LLMs, dark social, AI answer boxes, snippets, YouTube Shorts, and who knows where else. By the time they land on your site—if they land on your site—that visit is precious.

GA4’s engagement metrics reflect a bigger shift in Google’s approach: when attribution is unreliable, the real value is in what happens on your site. These metrics show you what visitors do once they arrive, and that might be the most honest and useful data we have left.

The long-term impact of AI on digital marketing is still unfolding, but if early signs from AI search are any indication, traffic and attribution as we know them are only going to get harder to track. That makes understanding on-site engagement not just helpful—but essential.

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If you’d like help making sense of GA4 or setting up engagement tracking the right way, reach out to me for a free consultation. I’d be happy to help you get more out of your data.