A/B Testing: Testing the relative effectiveness of multiple versions of the same advertisement, or other content, in referring visitors to a site. Multiple versions of content can be uniquely identified by using a utm_content variable in the URL tag.
Admin Level: Google Analytics has two basic levels of access – View Reports Only and Account Administrator. Users with View Reports Only access can view their Profiles’ reports and view and edit their own language preferences. All Account Administrators have complete administrative control of the system.
Average Page Depth: The average number of pages on a site that visitors view during a single session. The Content Optimization > Content Performance > Depth of Visit report shows page depth figures over a specified period of time.
Bandwidth: The amount of data that can be transmitted along a communications channel in a fixed amount of time. For digital devices, the bandwidth is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or bytes per second, where 1 byte = 8 bits.
Bounce rate: Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.
Clicks: The’Clicks’ metric is the number of clicks on your search ads. This metric can be found on the Clicks tab of reports in the Traffic Sources –> AdWords section.
Clickthrough Rate (CTR): The number of times an ad is clicked on, divided by the number of impressions it receives. For example, if an ad is shown 20 times and receives 3 clicks, the clickthrough rate is 3/20, or 15%.
Content (Campaign Tracking): When tagging links, Content is used to label different versions of an advertisement. The variable for content, utm_content, indicates which version of a link the visitor clicked on to reach a web site – for example, utm_content=graphic_v2.
Content-targeted advertising: An advertising model in which advertising is either manually or automatically targeted to the content of a page. For example, on a site about motorcycles, the content-targeted advertisements would likely be related to motorcycles and motorcyclists.
Conversion: A conversion occurs when a visitor reaches a goal. There are three kinds of goals: URL Destination goals, Time on Site goals, and Pages per Visit goals.
Cookie: A small amount of text data given to a web browser by a web server. The data is stored on a user’s hard drive and is returned to the specific web server each time the browser requests a page from that server.
Cost data: Cost data is information imported from an AdWords account (i.e. impressions, clicks, cost, CTR, CPC) into an Analytics account. This data is found on the ‘Clicks’ tab of reports in the Traffic Sources –> AdWords section.
Cost source: The AdWords account from which a Google Analytics account imports its cost data.
Cost-per-click (CPC): An advertising model in which the advertiser pays a certain amount each time their ad is clicked, irrespective of how many times the ad is displayed. Also sometimes referred to as PPC (pay-per-click).
Default Page: The Default page is the webpage to which your server defaults when no page on the domain is specified. For example, if the “index.html” page is loaded from your server when a user enters “www.yourdomain.com”, “index.html” is considered to be the Default page.Your Analytics Profile Settings page contains a field in which to specify your default page. This information allows Google Analytics to combine hits to www.yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com/index.html, which are in fact the same page. If Default page isn’t specified, these would be reported as two separate pages.
DNS Lookup: The process of converting a numeric IP address into a text name. For example, 192.0.34.166 is converted to www.example.com.
Domain: A domain is a specific virtual area within the Internet, defined by the “top level” of the address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator). The top level is the end of the address; example: “whitehouse.gov”. In this example, the top-level part of the domain is “.gov”, indicating a US government entity. The “whitehouse” part is the second-level domain, indicating where within the “.gov” domain the information in question is to be found. Other common top-level domains include “.com”, “.net”, “.uk”, etc.
Domain Name System: (DNS) An Internet addressing system that uses a group of names that are listed with dots (.) between them, working from the most specific to the most general group. In the United States , the top (most general) domains are network categories such as edu (education), com (commercial), and gov (government). In other countries, a two-letter abbreviation for the country is used, such as ca ( Canada ) and au ( Australia ).
E-commerce: The buying and selling of goods and services, and the transfer of funds, through digital communications. Buying and selling over the internet, etc.
Encryption: The process of encoding information so that it is secure from other Internet users.
Exclude Filter: a filter type that discards all pageviews that do not match the filter string. For example, you may wish to create an Exclude filter that matches your home computer’s IP address, so that your own pageviews do not show up in Google Analytics reports.
Filter: A text string or regular expression that is applied to incoming traffic data. Filters are used to manipulate this data before it appears in Analytics reports, either by excluding certain pageviews or by rewriting data to make reports more readable or relevant.
Filter Field: When a pageview is logged, Google Analytics collects a range of information about that visit. This information can include the referrer, the IP address of the visitor, and the domain, subdirectories and filename of the page viewed. These different pieces of information are sorted into fields.
Filter Name: The Filter Name is intended to be a descriptive title for a filter. It is used only as an organizational aid, and may contain spaces.
Filter Pattern: A Filter Pattern is the actual text string against which Google Analytics will attempt to match pageview data. Patterns can be specific text to match or may use wildcards as part of a regular expression.
Filter Type: There are a number of different Filter Types available in your Google Analytics account. There are three preconfigured filters for common tasks, as well as Advanced filter options that allow you to manipulate data to suit your needs.
Firewall: A security device that protects a network from unauthorized access. This can be a special kind of hardware router, a piece of software, or both.
Frame: A “page within a page.” A frame is a rectangular region within a web page, in which another page is loaded. Frames are often used for navigation menus, so that the navigation bar remains on the page while new pages are loaded within the frame.
GET Method: The GET method is a way of passing parameters of an HTTP request from the browser to the server. This method puts the parameters, usually separated by special characters such as ampersands (”&”), in the URL itself, which is viewable to the person using the browser. The other method is POST, which is used when the site does not want to pass the parameters in the URL. POST is desirable when there is a large quantity of text to send to the server or the information is sensitive.
Goal Conversion Rate: A conversion occurs when a visitor reaches a goal. Goal Conversion Rate is the percentage of visits which resulted in a conversion to at least one of your goals.
Impression: A display of a referral link or advertisement on a web page.
Include Filter: A type of filter within your Google Analytics account. Include filters match a text string or regular expression against incoming data, and keep only those hits that match. Other hits are discarded and are not included in your Analytics reports.
IP Address: A unique identifier for a computer or device on a TCP/IP network such as the Internet. An IP address is written as four numbers, each separated by periods. Each number ranges from 0 to 255.
JavaScript: A scripting language commonly used within web pages. JavaScript programs are executed by the browser, rather than running on the server. Google Analytics uses JavaScript in its tracking code, and provides JavaScript functions such as urchinTracker to help users customize their reports.
Keyword: A significant word or phrase, relevant to the web page or document in question. Keyword searching is the most common form of text search on the internet. To see conversions per keyword, click the Goal Conversion tab in the Traffic Sources > Keywords report.
Landing page: The first page that a user views during a session. This is also known as the ‘entrance page.’
Medium: In the context of campaign tracking, medium indicates the means by which a visitor to a site received the link to that site. Examples of mediums are “organic” and “cost-per-click” in the case of search engine links, and “email” and “print” in the case of newsletters. The UTM variable for medium is utm_medium.
Navigation: Describes the movement of a user through a website or other application interface. This term also indicates the system of available links and buttons that the user can use to navigate through the website.
Network: A set of computers connected so that they can communicate and share information. Most major networks are also connected to the global network called the Internet.
New visitor: Google Analytics records a visitor as new when any page on your site has been accessed for the first time by a web browser. This is accomplished by setting a first-party cookie on that browser. Thus, new visitors are not identified by the personal information they provide :
No Referral: The “(no referral)” entry appears in various Referrals reports in the cases when the visitor to the site got there by typing the URL directly into the browser window or using a bookmark/favorite. In other words, the visitor did not click on a link to get to the site, so there was no referral, technically speaking.
Pageview: A pageview is an instance of a page being loaded by a browser. Google Analytics logs a pageview each time the tracking code is executed. This can be an HTML or similar page with tracking code being loaded by a browser, or a call to _trackPageview() to simulate a pageview.
Profile: A Profile is a set of rules that dictate the data to be used for your Google Analytics reports. Profile information includes but isn’t limited to the domain or subdomain to be tracked, whether data should be collected for certain pages or directories only, user access levels, and funnel and goal configurations.
Profile ID: The profile ID of your account can be found in the URL of your reports. For example, if you select a profile from an account and view your reports, you may see a URL string that looks like this:
https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/?reset=1&id=123456&pdr=00000000-00000000
Query Parameter: Any VARIABLE=VALUE pair that follows the question mark (”?”) in a URL. Google Analytics receives campaign information from query parameters appended to destination URLs.
Query Token: A special character in a URL that separates the page location information from the query string. The query string may contain numerous field=value pairs, all of which must come after the initial query token. For example, in this URL:
http://www.google.com/search?q=analytics the query token is the question mark.
Query Variable: The VARIABLE portion of the VARIABLE=VALUE pair that makes up a query parameter. Variables store information for a web page to use, such as search terms entered into a search engine. For example, when a user searches Google for “foo”, the resulting URL is:
http://www.google.com/search?q=foo In this example, the query variable is q.
Referral: In Google Analytics, a site that refers traffic to the site you are tracking. A referral occurs when any hyperlink is clicked that takes a user to a new page of file in any website – the originating site is the referrer. When a user arrives at your site, referral information is captured, which includes the referrer URL if available, any search terms that were used, time and date information and more.
Referrer: The URL of an HTML page that refers visitors to a site.
Referring Source: The URL of an HTML page that sends visitors to a site by means of a hyperlink.
Regular Expression: A string that uses wildcards and syntax rules to match a set of strings. Regular expressions are used in Google Analytics to customize filters to match the incoming data.
Repeat Session: A session for which the visitor can be tracked as unique, and who has visited the site previously during the current Date Range.
Request URI: Universal Resource Indicator, or the path part of a URL. For example, in the URL http://example.com/olympics/sports/hockey, the hostname is ‘example.com’ and the request URI is the section after the hostname, ‘/olympics/sports/hockey.’ During processing, the Google Analytics processing engine parses through each of the __utm.gif hits, and stores the hostname and the request URI into separate database fields.
Return on Investment (ROI): Revenue – Cost) / Cost, expressed as a percentage.
Returning visitor: Google Analytics records a visitor as ‘returning’ when the _utma cookie for your domain exists on the browser accessing your site.
Revenue: In versions of Google Analytics that support e-commerce reporting, the term Revenue is used in place of whichever local currency is being used, since Google Analytics supports currencies other than the US dollar. Revenue tabs appear on several reports as data-display options when appropriate.
Session: A period of interaction between a visitor’s browser and a particular website, ending when the browser is closed or shut down, or when the user has been inactive on that site for a specified period of time. For the purpose of Google Analytics reports, a session is considered to have ended if the user has been inactive on the site for 30 minutes. You can update this setting with an addition to our tracking code.
Status Code: A status code, also known as an error code, is a 3-digit code number assigned to every request (hit) received by the server. Most valid hits will have a status code of 200 (”ok”). “Page not found” errors will generate a 404 error.
Tracking Code: The Google Analytics tracking code is a small snippet of code that is inserted into the body of an HTML page. When the HTML page is loaded, the tracking code contacts the Google Analytics server and logs a pageview for that page and captures information about the visit.
Unique Pageviews/Unique Views: A unique pageview, as seen in the Top Content report, aggregates pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session. A unique view represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or more times.
Unique Visitor Session: A Unique Visitor Session is a visitor interaction with a website for which the visitor can be tracked and declared with a high degree of confidence as being unique for the time period being analyzed.
Unique Visitors (or Absolute Unique Visitors): Unique Visitors represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period. A Unique Visitor is determined using cookies.
User Agent: A user agent is a generic term for any program used for accessing a website. This includes browsers (such as Firefox), robots and spiders, and any other software program that retrieves information from a website.
Visitor: A Visitor is a construct designed to come as close as possible to defining the number of actual, distinct people who visited a website. There is of course no way to know if two people are sharing a computer from the website’s perspective, but a good visitor-tracking system can come close to the actual number. The most accurate visitor-tracking systems generally employ cookies to maintain tallies of distinct visitors.
Visitor Session: A Visitor Session is a defined period of interaction between a Visitor (both unique and untrackable visitor types) and a website.
Source: Google Analytics Help Center
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