Visit Length
How long visitors stay at a location, as a typical and average duration plus a breakdown into short-to-long visit bands.
What does Visit Length tell me?
Visit Length shows how long visitors stay at a location. It reports a typical duration (the median) and an average duration, together with a breakdown of visits into duration bands, from quick stops to long stays.
To keep the measure comparable across locations, it counts visitors and excludes the people who live or work at the location, so a venue's regular staff and neighbours do not dominate the long-stay band. Durations are estimates, not stopwatch measurements.
What questions does it answer?
- How long do people typically spend here?
- Is dwell time rising or falling over time?
- Which kind of visit dominates this location, a quick stop or a long stay?
- How does time spent here compare to similar locations?
Reading this cadence
The median, the average, and the band breakdown are summarised over the period this page covers. Longer cadences give a more stable picture of typical dwell; shorter cadences show how dwell shifts around specific days or events.
How it's produced
Each visit's duration is estimated from the visitor's period of activity at the location, then summarised into the median, the average, and the duration bands.
How to read it
- Median vs average. The median is the middle visit length and resists outliers; the average reflects the pull of very short or very long visits. Read them together.
- Duration bands. Visits are grouped into quick, short, moderate, and long duration bands, each reporting a visit count and a typical-day median.
- Scope. This counts visitors only and excludes residents and workers, so its visit counts are smaller than the location's total Foot Traffic, which includes everyone.
Related metrics
- Foot Traffic, how many of those visits there were.
- Trade Areas, where those visitors came from.
Country- and dataset-specific behaviour (coverage, geography units, exclusions, release timing) is documented on each dataset in its country catalog.
Schema
This is the standard schema for the metric. Always check the schema on the specific dataset you're using, since small variations may occur per country, map, or cadence. See the list of datasets using this metric below.
Map columns (e.g. ZIP code, state, brand, polygon) are usually exposed on each dataset as available columns that aren't included by default. They're not listed here because each dataset is connected to a different map and therefore has a different set of map columns available. Open a specific dataset below to see its full schema.
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| location_id | STRING | Unique identifier of the location. |
| observation_start_date | DATE | Start of the observation period. |
| observation_end_date | DATE | End of the observation period. |
| visit_length_p50 | FLOAT | Median visit duration, in minutes. |
| visit_length_avg | FLOAT | Average visit duration, in minutes. |
| quick_stop_visits_sum | INTEGER | Total visits in the shortest duration band. |
| quick_stop_visits_p50 | INTEGER | Median daily visits in the shortest duration band. |
| short_stay_visits_sum | INTEGER | Total visits in a short duration band. |
| short_stay_visits_p50 | INTEGER | Median daily visits in a short duration band. |
| moderate_stay_visits_sum | INTEGER | Total visits in a moderate duration band. |
| moderate_stay_visits_p50 | INTEGER | Median daily visits in a moderate duration band. |
| long_stay_visits_sum | INTEGER | Total visits in the longest duration band. |
| long_stay_visits_p50 | INTEGER | Median daily visits in the longest duration band. |