For quite some time now, we’ve been observing somewhat contradictory visitor behavior (according to Matomo data) during social media campaigns. In addition, the statistics show fairly high click-through rates and visit counts, but in each campaign, the average visit duration ranges from 0 to 9 seconds. This doesn’t make sense, since a visit involves transitioning from from SM platform to a landing page located on the website, and visitors understand this.
Could anyone share how the time of a visit is calculated, or what might be causing this discrepancy?
One thing to keep in mind is that Matomo’s visit duration can be misleading, especially when visitors leave the landing page without triggering another tracked interaction. In some cases Matomo may not be able to accurately measure how long someone stayed, so the recorded duration can appear very short or even be 0 seconds. I would also check whether your tracking code is loading correctly on the landing page and whether campaign parameters are being passed consistently.
That can happen in Matomo when a visitor lands on a page and leaves without another tracked action. I’d check the pageview tracking and enable the Heartbeat Timer for more accurate visit-duration data
This can happen because Matomo calculates visit duration from tracked actions. If no second interaction is recorded before the visitor leaves, the visit may show as 0–9 seconds even if they stayed longer. I’d check tracking, consent settings, redirects, and whether ad blockers are affecting event collection.
