> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.stage.systems/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # What is counted > What a visit is, when the consent prompt applies, and what Stage never stores about a visitor. ## A visit A **visit** is one recorded page view. A **session** is one person's visits within a 30-minute window: several pages in one sitting are several visits in one session. Someone who comes back later is a returning visitor. The campaign funnel counts sessions, so its "visits" stage is one per session: a person who comes back after 30 minutes counts again. Stage counts visits as pages are served, not with a script in the visitor's browser. Bots, crawlers and monitoring tools are filtered out. Members editing the site are not counted. ## Engagement A small piece of the page reports, when the visitor leaves, how long they stayed, how far they scrolled, and which named buttons they pressed. That feeds read depth and the **engaged** stage of the campaign funnel: a second page, 30 seconds, or half a page scrolled. ## Consent Visitors in the EU, the EEA and the UK are not counted until they accept the site's consent prompt. If they decline, nothing is recorded. Visitors elsewhere are counted without a prompt. The prompt itself is part of your site's design. Google Analytics, if you use it, follows the same answer when **Require cookie consent** is on under Settings, then Integrations. With it off, Google's tag loads before consent. ## What is never stored | Never stored | Instead | | ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | **Addresses** | A visitor's internet address is never saved. Stage keeps a pseudonymous key derived from it, scoped to your site. It can recognise the same visitor across sessions on your site, so a returning visitor and a later enquiry can be joined. It cannot be turned back into an address and means nothing on any other site | | **Identity** | Nobody is identified until they type their email into a form or contact you | | **Cross-site tracking** | No third-party cookies, no fingerprinting. Every cookie is your site's own: a session cookie (30 minutes), a campaign cookie that remembers which post brought the person (30 days), the consent answer (one year), and a short-lived region flag that tells the page whether to show the consent prompt | | **Behaviour** | No mouse tracking, no recordings, no keystrokes | ## AI assistants AI crawlers and assistants are counted separately, whatever the consent setting, because they are not people. See [AI activity](/analytics/ai-crawlers). ## Next steps What the Performance tool shows. When a visitor becomes a person.