google analytics definition of terms

Attribution

The process of assigning credit for sales and conversions to touchpoints in conversion paths.

Attribution allows marketers to quantify each channel's contribution to sales and conversions. For example, many people may purchase on your site after searching for your brand on Google. However, they may have been introduced to your brand via a display ad or a blog. A marketer uses attribution to appropriately distribute monetary credit for purchases among the many marketing channels that may have contributed to each sale.

 

Attribution model

A rule, or set of rules, that determines how credit for sales and conversions is assigned to touchpoints in conversion paths.

An attribution model is the rule, or set of rules, that determines how credit for sales and conversions is assigned to touchpoints in conversion paths. For example, Last Interaction attribution assigns 100% credit to the final touchpoints (i.e., clicks) that immediately precede sales or conversions. First Interaction attribution assigns 100% credit to touchpoints that initiate conversion paths. These are two examples of attribution models.

 

Channel Grouping

A roll-up of traffic sources in the Acquisition reports that groups several marketing activities together. Channel groupings allow you to view and compare aggregated metrics by channel name, as well as individual traffic source, medium, or campaign name.

In the Acquisition section's Overview and Channels reports, you can see your data organized according to the Default Channel Grouping, a rule-based grouping of the most common sources of traffic, like Paid Search and Direct. This allows you to quickly check the performance of each of your traffic channels.

 

Content Grouping

A roll-up of content in the Behavior reports that groups several pages or screens together to better reflect the structure of your site or app. Content groupings allow you to view and compare aggregated metrics by content group name, as well as individual URL, page title, or screen name.

Content Grouping lets you group content into a logical structure that reflects how you think about your site or app, and then view and compare aggregated metrics by group name in addition to being able to drill down to the individual URL, page title, or screen name. For example, you can see the aggregated number of pageviews for all pages in a group like Men/Shirts, and then drill in to see each URL or page title.

 

Conversion

A completed activity, online or offline, that is important to the success of your business. Examples include a completed sign-up for your email newsletter (a Goal conversion) and a purchase (a transaction, sometimes called an Ecommerce conversion).

A conversion can be a macro conversion or a micro conversion. A macro conversion is typically a completed purchase transaction. In contrast, a micro conversion is a completed activity, such as an email signup, that indicates that the user is moving towards a macro conversion.

 

Data Set

A container that holds the data you upload to Google Analytics.

• Data Sets are an essential component of the Data Import feature.

• A Data Set's type corresponds to the specific type of data you want to import. For example, there are Data Set types for User Data, Cost Data, Content Data, etc.

• When you create a Data Set, you define a schema, which is the structure that joins the data you upload with the existing data in your hits.

 

Dimension

A descriptive attribute or characteristic of data. Browser, Landing Page and Campaign are all examples of default dimensions in Google Analytics.

A dimension is a descriptive attribute or characteristic of an object that can be given different values. For example, a geographic location could have dimensions called Latitude, Longitude, or City Name. Values for the City Name dimension could be San Francisco, Berlin, or Singapore.

Browser, Exit Page, Screens, and Session Duration are all examples of dimensions that appear by default in Google Analytics. Dimensions appear all of your reports, though you might see different ones depending on the specific report. Use them to help organize, segment, and analyze your data.

Google Analytics also lets you create custom dimensions to hold additional types of data you send via the tracking code, or by using Data Import, or by using the Analytics API.

 

Event

Event is a type of hit used to track user interactions with content. Examples of user interactions commonly tracked with Events include downloads, mobile ad clicks, gadgets, Flash elements, AJAX embedded elements, and video plays.

 

Goal

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 Google Analytics account.

 

Hit

An interaction that results in data being sent to Google Analytics. Common hit types include page tracking hits, event tracking hits, and ecommerce hits.

Each time the tracking code is triggered by a user’s behavior (for example, user loads a page on a website or a screen in a mobile app), Google Analytics records that activity. Each interaction is packaged into a hit and sent to Google’s servers. Examples of hit types include:

• page tracking hits

• event tracking hits

• ecommerce tracking hits

• social interaction hits

 

Measurement Protocol

A standard set of rules for collecting and sending hits from any internet-connected device to Google Analytics.

The Measurement Protocol lets you send data to Google Analytics from any internet-connected device. It's particularly useful when you want to send data to Google Analytics from a kiosk, a point of sale system, or anything that is not a website or mobile app. Because, while the Google Analytics JavaScript and mobile SDKs automatically build hits to send data to Google Analytics from websites and mobile apps, you must manually build data collection hits for other kinds of devices. The Measurement Protocol defines how to construct the hits and how to send them to Google Analytics.

 

Metric

A quantitative measurement of your data. Metrics in Google Analytics can be sums or ratios.

Metrics are individual elements of a dimension that can be measured as a sum or a ratio. For example, the dimension Citycan be associated with a metric like Population, which would have a sum value of all the residents of the specific city.

Screenviews, Page per Session, and Average Session Duration are examples of metrics in Google Analytics.

 

Pageview

An instance of a page being loaded (or reloaded) in a browser. Pageviews is a metric defined as the total number of pages viewed.

 

Permission

The right to perform administrative and configuration tasks, to create and share assets, and to read and interact with report data.

In order to use certain features in Google Analytics, you must have the appropriate permission. There are 4 permissions:

• Manage Users

• Edit

• Collaborate

• Read & Analyze

Each permission can be granted at one more levels: account, property or view.

 

Property

A sub-component of a Google Analytics account that determines which data is organized and stored together. Any resource tagged with the same Property ID is collected and stored together. A single property can be used to track one website or mobile app, or be a roll-up of the data from multiple sites or mobile apps.

 

Reporting API

A set of protocols and tools designed to extract data from your Google Analytics account into custom scripts or programs for more automated and efficient reporting and analysis. API is short for Application Programming Interface.

 

Roll-Up Reporting

A feature of Roll-Up Properties, which aggregate data from multiple source properties into a single property.

Roll-Up Reporting is a special kind of reporting that lets you analyze the aggregated data that's in a Roll-Up Property. Roll-Up Reporting is only available for Google Analytics Premium Accounts, and only works on designated Roll-Up Properties.

 

Sampling

The practice of selecting a subset of data from your traffic and reporting on the trends detected in that sample set. Sampling is widely used in statistical analysis because analyzing a subset of data gives similar results to an analysis of a complete data set, but can produce these results with a smaller a computational burden and a reduced processing time.

 

Segment

A subset of sessions or users that share common attributes. Segments allow you to isolate and analyze groups of sessions or users for better analysis.

Segmentation allows you to isolate and analyze subsets of your data. For example, you might segment your data by marketing channel so that you can see which channel is responsible for an increase in purchases. Drilling down to look at segments of your data helps you understand what caused a change to your aggregated data.

 

Session

The period of time a user is active on your site or app. By default, if a user is inactive for 30 minutes or more, any future activity is attributed to a new session. Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes are counted as part of the original session.

 

Solutions Gallery

Lets you share and import custom reporting tools and assets, like dashboards and segments, into your Google Analytics accounts.

 

Source / Medium

Source: the origin of your traffic, such as a search engine (for example, google) or a domain (example.com). Medium: the general category of the source, for example, organic search (organic), cost-per-click paid search (cpc), web referral (referral).

Source/Medium is a dimension that combines the dimensions Source and Medium. Examples of Source/Medium includegoogle/organic, example.com/referral, and newsletter9-2014/email.

 

Tag

A snippet of JavaScript that sends information to a third party, such as Google. The Google Analytics tracking code is an example of a tag.

A tag is snippet of JavaScript that sends information to a third party, such as Google. Tags collect data, target your ad campaigns, track ads, and perform other functions. The Google Analytics tracking code is an example of a tag. If you don't use a tag management solution such as Google Tag Manager, you need to add these snippets of JavaScript directly to the source code of your site.

 

Tracking code

The Google Analytics tracking code is a snippet of JavaScript that collects and sends data to Google Analytics from a website.

The Google Analytics tracking code may be directly added directly to the HTML of each page on your site, or indirectly using a tag management system such as Google Tag Manager.

 

Universal Analytics

Universal Analytics is the most current data collection technology for Google Analytics. It uses the analytics.js tracking code for websites, an SDK for mobile apps, and the Measurement Protocol for other digital devices.

 

User ID views

A special type of reporting view that only includes data about the subset of traffic that has a user ID assigned.

User ID views include a set of Cross Device reports, which aren’t available in other reporting views. The Cross Device reports give you the tools you need to analyze how users engage with your content on different devices over the course of multiple sessions. All other standard reports and tools are also available in User ID views.

User ID views do not include all of your data. To analyze all of your data, use a different type of reporting view.

User ID view are only available to Universal Analytics properties in which the User ID is enabled. You must also create User ID views. They do not exist by default in your account.

 

View

A view or reporting view is a subset of a Google Analytics account property that can have its own unique configuration settings. You can create multiple views for a single property and configure each view to show a different subset of data for the property.

 

View filter

A configuration setting that allows you to add, remove or modify your data during processing before it is displayed in your reports.

View filters allow you to limit and modify the traffic data that is included in a view. For example, you can use filters to exclude traffic from particular IP addresses, focus on a specific subdomain or directory, or convert dynamic page URLs into readable text strings.

 

Metric Name	Category	Definition
Bounces	Site Usage	This field identifies the number of single-page visits to your site over the selected dimension. For example, if you apply this metric to the Ad Campaign dimension, it'll display the number of single-page visits to your site by users that reached your site via a particular ad campaign.
Bounce Rate	Site Usage	The percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page).
Clicks	Site Usage	This field identified the number of times a user has clicked on your Ads.
Entrances	Site Usage	This metric identifies the number of entrances to your site. It will always be equal to the number of visits when applied over your entire website. Thus, this metric is most useful when combined with particular content pages, at which point, it will indicate the number of times a particular page served as an entrance to your site.
Exits	Site Usage	This metric identifies the number of exits from your site, and, as with entrances, it will always be equal to the number of visits when applied over your entire website. Use this metric in combination with particular content pages in order to determine the number of times that particular page was the last one viewed by visitors.
% Exit	Site Usage	The percentage of site exits that occurred from a page or set of pages.
New Visits	Site Usage	The number of new visits by people who have never been to the site before.
Time on Page	Site Usage	This field indicates how long a visitor spent on a particular page or set of pages. It is calculated by subtracting the initial view time for a particular page from the initial view time for a subsequent page. Thus, this metric does not apply to exit pages for your site.
Pageviews	Site Usage	This field indicates the total number of pageviews for your site when applied over the selected dimension. For example, if you select this metric together with Request URI, it will return the number of page views over the returned result set for the Request URI for your report.
Time on Site	Site Usage	The time a visitor spends on your site.
Visits	Site Usage	The number of times your visitors has been to your site (unique sessions initiated by all your visitors). If a user is inactive on your site for 30 minutes or more, any future activity will be attributed to a new session. Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes will be counted as part of the original session.
Visitors	Site Usage	A user that visits your site. The initial session by a user during any given date range is considered to be an additional visit and an additional visitor. Any future sessions from the same user during the selected time period are counted as additional visits, but not as additional visitors.
Unique Pageviews	Content	The number of visits during which the specified page(s) was/were viewed at least once.
Total Unique Searches	Content	The total number of times your site search was used. This excludes multiple searches on the same keyword during the same visit.
Visits with Search	Content	The total number of visits where internal site search was used.
Search Refinements	Content	The number of times a visitor searched again immediately after performing a search.
Time after Search	Content	Starting from the first use of internal search, time spent on site until either the session ended or until another search happened
Search Depth	Content	The average number of pages visitors viewed after performing a search. This is calculated as Sum of all "search_depth" across all searches / ("search_transitions" + 1)
Search Exits	Content	The number of searches a visitor made immediately before leaving the site.
Goal1-4 Start	Goals	If goals are configured, the total number of visitors who have completed the first goal step for this particular goal.
Goal Conversions	Goals	The number of goals completed by visitors.
Goal1-4 Completions	Goals	If goals are configured, the total number of visitors who have completed all elements defined for this particular goal.
Total Goal Value	Goals	This is the total value used in Google Analytics' ROI calculations, and can be either a set value for the page, or a dynamic value pulled from your e-commerce receipt page.
Goal1-4 Value	Goals	If goals are configured, the total cumulative value for this particular goal. This definition applies for Goal1 - Goal4 Values.
Per Visit Goal Value	Goals	This is the value used in Google Analytics' ROI calculations per visit, and can be either a set value for the page, or a dynamic value pulled from your e-commerce receipt page.
Goal Conversion Rate	Goals	In the context of Campaign Tracking, the percentage of sessions on a site that result in a conversion goal being reached on that site.

  

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