Google Analytics (GA) announced it changed its definition of a visit (or session). This will necessarily have an impact on your metrics in GA, and at this moment in time, it is not clear if the changes observed are the result of a bug in the new implementation, or the new normal… We are following closely and will keep you posted as things develop.

UPDATE: (08/15/2011) A very good summary of the impacts can be found here on the L3 Analytics blog.
UPDATE: (08/18/2011) According to Google’s blog post, an issue was identified in the new visit count code and was fixed on Tuesday, August 16th… Initial reports seem to confirm this – hope you are seeing too!

It appears Google has introduced a bug in their latest javascript code… Because of our code, you and your customers will not see a javascript error. However, the code is not working in the background, which means your Google Analytics data is not being collected correctly at the moment.

We are monitoring the situation, but can’t do much to fix this, unfortunately. We will keep you updated as this unfolds…

Thank you!

Update: Google has acknowledged the issue and are working on a fix.

Update: Although Google has not acknowledged a fix yet, the issue seems to be fixed, once the new file is downloaded in the browser’s cache. We will let you know when Google officialy marks this issue as fixed.

Update: Google has officially marked this as fixed:We have confirmed that sites which use a third party javascript library, prototype.js, are affected. By our estimates, it appears to be less than 10% of Google Analytics users. Affected accounts will see a drop in traffic starting at 7am PST this morning (Thursday August 4th) with impact peaking at 9:30am PST. A fix has been deployed and collection will return to normal in approximately 2 hours.