All the definitions you will ever need for Google Analytics. This glossary includes terms for both Universal Analytics and GA4. Bookmark this page so you can refer back to it whenever you need it!
BASICS
- bounce rate: The percentage of single-page sessions in which there was no interaction with the page. A bounced session has a duration of 0 seconds.
- bounce: If a user reaches your site and does not visit any other pages on your site within that session, it counts as a bounce
- pages per session: average number of pages viewed during a session. Repeated views of a single page are counted.
- users: Users who have initiated at least one session during the date range
- new users: The number of first-time users during the selected date range.
- session: Total number of Sessions within the date range. A session is the period time a user is actively engaged with your website, app, etc. One user can initiate multiple sessions
- sessions per user: average number of sessions per user
- source/medium: Source/Medium describes where your traffic comes from. The Source is the place users are before seeing your content, like a search engine or another website. The Medium describes how users arrived at your content. Values for Medium include "organic" for unpaid search traffic and "none" for direct traffic. Custom values you define for Source and Medium will also be included in this dimension.
- direct: users that typed your URL directly into their browser, or who had bookmarked your site
- organic: users that came to your site through an organic search listing - does not include ads data
- referral: users that cam to your site through another site that does not fit into another channel category (email, organic, social)
- UTMs: tracking parameters that can be added to links from referring sites to get more details about the source/medium - very helpful for FB ads and email
- pageview: total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are counted.
- % Exit: It indicates how often users exit from that page or set of pages when they view the page(s)
- referral exclusion: Exclude these domains from your referral traffic. Users arriving at your site via any of these domains will not be counted as referral traffic in your reports.
- site speed: avg page load time (sec): average amount of time (in seconds) it takes for pages from the sample set to load, from initiation of the pageview (e.g. click on a page link) to load completion in the browser.
- if people aren't converting or are bouncing at a high rate, check this out - if the site is more than 7 seconds, people might not wait for it to load
- app + web property: also known as the new GA4 - combines data from both Apps and Websites in one place. Don't worry if you don't have an app, GA4 is the newest version of Analytics and still makes sense for just website tracking.
- average session duration: average length of all sessions
- data stream: a flow of data from your website or app to Analytics. There are 3 types of data stream: Web (forwebsites), iOS (for iOS apps), and Android (for Android apps).
- landing page: The pages through which visitors entered your site.
- exits: Exits is the number of times visitors exited your site from a specified page or set of pages.
- channel: A point of interactions with existing or prospective customers, e.g. "email", "social", "paid search".
CONVERSIONS
- goals: A configuration setting that allows you to track the valuable actions, or conversions, that happen on your site or mobile app. Goals allow you to measure how well your site or app fulfills your target objectives. You can set up individual Goals to track discrete actions, like transactions with a minimum purchase amount or the amount of time spent on a screen. Each time a user completes a Goal, a conversion is logged in your Analytics account.
- segments: a subset of your Analytics data. For example, of your entire set of users, one segment might be users from a particular country or city. Another segment might be users who purchase a particular product or who visit a specific page on your site.
- assisted conversion: The number of conversions for which this channel appeared on the conversion path, but was not the final conversion interaction.
- conversion rate: the ratio of transactions to sessions, expressed as a percentage
- time lag: the number of days from the first site interaction to conversion
- path length: the number of channel interactions from the first interaction to conversion
- cross device: connects data from multiple sessions across devices to see the conversion process from start to finish
- event: user interactions with content other than page loads (pageviews). Downloads, link clicks, form submissions, and video plays are all examples of actions you might want to analyze
AUDIENCE
- affinity categories: Affinity categories are used to reach potential customers, to make them aware of your brand or product. These are users higher in the purchase funnel, near the beginning of the process.
- in-market segments: Users in these segments are more likely to be ready to purchase products or services in the specified category. These are users lower in the purchase funnel, near the end of the process.
- behavior flow: the path users traveled from one page or event to the next. This report can help you discover what content keeps users engaged with your site.
ATTRIBUTION
- attribution models:
- first click/interaction: The number of conversions for which this channel was the first conversion interaction.
- last click/interaction: The number of conversions for which this channel was the final conversion interaction.
- time decay: Gives more credit to touchpoints that happened closer in time to the conversion.
- position-based: Gives 40% of credit to both the first- and the last-clicked event, with the remaining 20% spread out across the other touchpoints on the path.
- last non-direct click: All direct traffic is ignored, and 100% of the credit for the conversion goes to the last channel that the customer clicked through from before converting.
- last google ads click: The last Google Ads click would receive 100% of the credit for the conversion.
- linear: Distributes the credit for the conversion equally across all touchpoints on the path.
- data-driven: Distributes credit for the conversion based on observed data for each conversion type. It's different from the other models because your account's data is used specifically to calculate the actual contribution of each touchpoint.
Comment below if there are any terms you would like us to add to the list!