Dwell time: 3 things to know
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2024 9:28 am
What is dwell time on social media or on a website? Here is the definition of dwell time in 3 key points.
You may have heard of dwell time in relation to your social media and website performance. If we stick to the literal translation, its definition translates to “downtime” or “dwell time”. If we stick to this literal definition, it doesn’t mean much. But you will see that it is in fact a very useful capital concept both on social media and for judging the quality of your website content.
To see things more clearly, we will specify what this means in the context of your digital strategy. To do this, we must separate two cases: social networks and natural referencing.
Definition of dwell time in natural SEO referencing
In the context of your website, dwell time represents the time that austria telemarketing data will elapse between the moment when an Internet user arrives on your website and the moment when they return to Google results (the SERP).
In this, dwell time must be clearly differentiated from session time on a web page. Session time on a web page defines the time that the Internet user spends on a specific page of your website.

Let’s take an example: A user arrives on your site and views your homepage for one minute. This minute represents the session time on your website’s homepage. If the user continues browsing and spends another 45 seconds viewing web pages on your website before returning to Google’s SERP, then your dwell time is 1 minute and 45 seconds.
Dwell time SEO reference
Here we see the page view time, which should not be confused with the dwell time.
Definition of dwell time on social networks
In order to improve the user experience, social networks are giving more and more importance to the perceived quality of the publications distributed. And for this, social networks (and LinkedIn in particular) are relying on a new criterion: dwell time. This refers to the time spent by the Internet user on a publication, it is expressed in seconds.
LinkedIn has conducted very in-depth research on dwell time and found that to improve the user experience and to allow creators to improve their visibility, they realized that they had a very relevant indicator here. The social network's engineers were able to detect that the higher the dwell time on a LinkedIn post, the more likely Internet users are to interact with the post, so it was integrated into the operating criteria of the LinkedIn algorithm . It is therefore a clear indicator of the potential quality of a post on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn also noticed that this correlation between dwell time and user interactions was valid regardless of the type of post (image, video, etc.). It should be noted that this element does not only apply to LinkedIn; it is now used on many social networks, including Tik Tok and Instagram.
For you, as a creator, communicator or company, you must therefore remember that the more you ma
You may have heard of dwell time in relation to your social media and website performance. If we stick to the literal translation, its definition translates to “downtime” or “dwell time”. If we stick to this literal definition, it doesn’t mean much. But you will see that it is in fact a very useful capital concept both on social media and for judging the quality of your website content.
To see things more clearly, we will specify what this means in the context of your digital strategy. To do this, we must separate two cases: social networks and natural referencing.
Definition of dwell time in natural SEO referencing
In the context of your website, dwell time represents the time that austria telemarketing data will elapse between the moment when an Internet user arrives on your website and the moment when they return to Google results (the SERP).
In this, dwell time must be clearly differentiated from session time on a web page. Session time on a web page defines the time that the Internet user spends on a specific page of your website.

Let’s take an example: A user arrives on your site and views your homepage for one minute. This minute represents the session time on your website’s homepage. If the user continues browsing and spends another 45 seconds viewing web pages on your website before returning to Google’s SERP, then your dwell time is 1 minute and 45 seconds.
Dwell time SEO reference
Here we see the page view time, which should not be confused with the dwell time.
Definition of dwell time on social networks
In order to improve the user experience, social networks are giving more and more importance to the perceived quality of the publications distributed. And for this, social networks (and LinkedIn in particular) are relying on a new criterion: dwell time. This refers to the time spent by the Internet user on a publication, it is expressed in seconds.
LinkedIn has conducted very in-depth research on dwell time and found that to improve the user experience and to allow creators to improve their visibility, they realized that they had a very relevant indicator here. The social network's engineers were able to detect that the higher the dwell time on a LinkedIn post, the more likely Internet users are to interact with the post, so it was integrated into the operating criteria of the LinkedIn algorithm . It is therefore a clear indicator of the potential quality of a post on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn also noticed that this correlation between dwell time and user interactions was valid regardless of the type of post (image, video, etc.). It should be noted that this element does not only apply to LinkedIn; it is now used on many social networks, including Tik Tok and Instagram.
For you, as a creator, communicator or company, you must therefore remember that the more you ma