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What is a Google Analytics Hit? #
When a tracker sends data to Google Analytics it’s called sending a hit and every hit must have a hit type.
That’s a lot of hit types! All hit types are sent to Google Analytics via a tracking code. The tracking code variation depends on what you are tracking.
The JavaScript tracking snippet sends a hit of type pageview. A pageview hits is recorded when the Google Analytics tracking code executes on page load. Google Analytics records data about the page itself (e.g. URL, page title), the technology (e.g. browser, browser version, browser language setting, screen resolution, operating system), traffic source and more. The tracking code sends this whole packet of data to Google Analytics as one hit.
Other hit types include:
- page tracking hits
- event tracking hits
- ecommerce tracking hits
- social interaction hits
What is the difference between a hit and session? #
A session is simply a collection of hits. For example a single session can contain multiple page views, events, social interactions, and ecommerce transactions.
How Many Hits in my Google Analytics Account? #
Google Analytics Standard, i.e. the “free version”, has a limit of 10 million hits per month per Account.
Notice that the hit volume now provided in the GA UI is at the Property level. This means that if your organization’s Google Analytics account contains more than one Property, you will want to sum up hits for each Property to see how close your organization’s Google Analytics account is to 10,000,000 hits per month.
How to Find Google Analytics Hit Volume #
Hit volume is available within in the Google Analytics user interface.
Go to the Admin panel, then at the Property level, then choose Property Settings.
Scroll down to Property Hit Volume.
What Happens if I Exceed Google’s Threshold? #
Google is increasingly presenting warnings in Google Analytics accounts that exceed the limit and has cautioned that users may be prevented from accessing Google Analytics reports.
According to Google:
“If you go over this limit, the Google Analytics team might contact you and ask you upgrade to Premium or implement client sampling to reduce the amount of data being sent to Google Analytics.”