Engaged Session

An engaged session is any session that lasted longer than ten seconds, fired a key event, or included at least two page or screen views.

GA4 checks each session against those three conditions. Meet any one of them and the session is engaged. This is the metric that replaced the old idea of a non-bounce: instead of measuring who left, GA4 measures who stuck around and did something. The ten-second threshold counts foreground time only, so a tab left open in the background does not qualify on time alone.

A visitor lands on your pricing page, reads for fifteen seconds, and leaves without clicking anything. That single-page visit is an engaged session, purely on time. Another visitor bounces off in four seconds having viewed one page and triggered nothing. That one is not engaged.

Any one condition is enough, and people forget that. A session does not need all three. Two page views alone qualify it even if the person spent two seconds on each, and a key event qualifies it even under ten seconds. If your engaged session count looks higher than you expected, check whether a fast-firing key event is quietly clearing the bar.

Ten seconds, a key event, or a second view. Pick one.