Google Analytics Glossary
Google Analytics is a fantastic free tool for tracking traffic and user activity on your website. However, in order to gain insights from that data and report on how your website is performing, you must first comprehend the meaning and meanings of each section of the Google Search Console.
With its language and expert vocabulary, the analytics tool Google Analytics may be perplexing and scary. Google Analytics has a plethora of reports and statistics, but what does it all mean?
We’ll help you comprehend the most essential terminology in Google Analytics with this Google Analytics Glossary.
Also you can also check Google Adwords Glossary
Common Google Analytics Definitions
Here are a few of the more common words you’ll come across in Google Analytics.
- Conversion: refers to a user action that fulfils the stated web page function (product purchase, download, newsletter subscription, etc.)
- Sessions: the behaviour of a single person on your website.
- Page Impression: A user loads or refreshes a page.
- Bounce Rate: The user’s activity on your website was limited to loading a single page.
- Entry (or Landing) Page: The entrance page is the first page that a website visitor sees.
- Entrances: the number of times visitors reached your site via a certain page or collection of pages.
- Visits: the overall number of visitors to your site, whether new or returning.
- Exit Point: The last page viewed by a website visitor is the departure point.
- Unique Visitors: the number of unduplicated visits to your website over the duration of a specific time period.
Table of Contents
Account
Inside Google Analytics, everything is stored in your account. Consider it the top-level folder to which you have access via your login credentials. Most of the time, you’ll have access to a single account that stores data for your website, but if you manage many websites that aren’t directly connected, they should be maintained in different accounts. For example, if you manage your company’s website and blog. Accounts (as well as their assets) can be shared by many users.
Acquisition
The Acquisition reports can help you understand how users reach your website. The reports show statistics based on your users’ source and medium of acquisition, as well as other acquisition parameters. There are separate statistics for paid Google AdWords traffic, organic Google traffic (if you’ve linked your Google Search Console account), traffic from social networks, and traffic from custom campaign tags.
Active Users
The Real Time and Home statistics reveal how many people are now accessing your website’s content. Data is turned into Real Time reports in a matter of seconds, and you may access data for the last 30 minutes. The Active visitors report (under ‘Audience’) informs you the number of unique visitors that visited your website within a certain number of days.
Active Pages
When viewing Real Time reporting, Active Pages displays the pages that visitors are presently visiting on your website. When a user navigates to another page or shuts their browser, the current page is deleted from the Real Time reporting.
Advertising Features
To establish remarketing lists in Google Analytics and gather demographic and interest data, you must select the Advertising Features option in Google Analytics. Advertising Features makes use of Google’s third-party advertising cookies. Advertising Features will be active automatically if you enable Google signals.
Analytics Intelligence
Machine learning from Google finds trends and changes in your data. For example, Analytics Intelligence will highlight any sudden rise in traffic to your website. You may also ask queries like ‘What is my greatest landing page?’ to rapidly obtain answers.
API
To obtain data from Google Analytics, you may utilise a variety of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). They let you to view your data outside of the Google Analytics interface, such as in Google Sheets and other apps. APIs include the Core Reporting API, which allows you to access data from conventional reports, the Real Time Reporting API, which allows you to access live data, the Multi-Channel Funnels API, which allows you to get attribution data, and the Embed API, Metadata API, and Management API.
API + Web History
This new Google Analytics feature allows you to aggregate data from applications and websites into a single set of reports. App + Web properties are distinct from ordinary properties, and data may be gathered from existing tags (if the gtag.js tracking code is used) or by adding a new tag. These characteristics provide more customised reporting possibilities. If you are monitoring a website, it is presently advised that you gather data into a regular property while also collecting data into an App + Web property.
Assisted coversion
You’ll find aided conversions in the ‘Multi-Channel Funnels’ reports, which show you the channels that lead to a conversion. For example, if a person arrived to the website via Twitter and then via Google AdWords, Twitter would be considered a “assisted conversion.” You may also examine aided conversions depending on campaign, source, medium, landing page, and other parameters in the reports.
Attribution
Attribution allows you to manage how much credit is given to the marketing channels that lead to the activity taking place. Google Analytics’ ‘Multi-Channel Funnels’ and ‘Attribution’ reports provide a number of attribution models. Attribution considers the channels (and traffic sources) used by a user throughout numerous sessions. Using the lookback window, you may specify how much historical data is included in the reports.
Audience
Custom audiences may be set up to see more specific analytics inside your reports. For example, if you’re thinking about starting a remarketing campaign, you may build an audience to track current performance before you start advertising. The Audiences report may be found under ‘Audience’.
Average session duration
Provides a high-level overview of how long people spend on your website. For example, if you had two users, one who spent three minutes on your website and the other who spent one minute, your average session time would be two minutes. Google Analytics does not track the time spent on the final page visited during a session. As a result, the average session duration will be smaller than the real amount of time individuals spend on your website.
Bounce
A bounce is reported when a user’s session only contains a single pageview. The idea is that someone comes to your website and they ‘bounce’ away and leave after only viewing a single page.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of sessions with a single pageview is known as the bounce rate. Bounce rate can give detailed information regarding the performance of your content. For example, if you want users to visit a following page on your website, you might try to reduce your bounce rate. When analysing bounce rate, it’s also vital to consider context, because some sites, such as a shop locator or a blog post, may provide all of the information someone is seeking for on a single page.
If a person just visits one page, the bounce rate is 100%, which may surprise you if you’re new to Google Analytics. If your website is a blog, you should expect a bounce rate of 70 to 80 percent. A low bounce rate (55% or less) usually implies high engagement.
Calculated Metric
Calculated metrics enable you to generate your own measurements based on the default metrics in your reports. You may, for example, establish your own computed measure that splits goal completions by users to get a user goal conversion rate that differs from the default session-based goal conversion rate. Find out more about computed metrics.
Campaign Name
Campaign name is one of the four primary aspects for reporting and analysing marketing campaigns (together with source, medium, and channel). where you utilise a campaign tagged URL for inbound marketing or from your Google AdWords campaigns (where Google AdWords is linked to Google Analytics), the campaign name is supplied.
Campaign Tag
Using campaign tags, Google Analytics can track and report on inbound marketing. Extra information (query parameters) are appended to URLs, which are subsequently included in Acquisition reports. Campaign tags comprise the following elements: campaign name, source, media, term, and content.
Change History
Changes to your Google Analytics account, properties, and views may be viewed by going to ‘Admin’ and selecting ‘Change History’. The email address of the person who made the modification is displayed, along with a brief description. Changes made by persons who have been deleted from Google Analytics will be shown as ‘Deleted User’.
Channel
Channels are top-level classifications for your inbound marketing. Each channel combines source and medium to provide overall performance information. The default channel grouping, for example, contains ‘Organic Search,’ ‘Paid Search,’ ‘Social,’ and ‘Email,’ which automatically merges pre-defined sources and media. You may also create your own channel groups.
Client ID
To record and analyse the behaviour of users on your website, Google Analytics employs a unique identifier known as a “Client ID.” By default, the identification is assigned at random and kept in a browser cookie on the user’s device.
Cohort Analysis
The Cohort Analysis report displays users by date segmentation. You may utilise the report to observe when people are gained and when they return to your website, for example.
Content Group
You can configure content groups to classify each page of your website into a particular category. This allows you to perform top-level reporting and analysis on your pages based on your own content classifications. You can create content groups by modifying your tracking code, by extracting details from your pages or by creating rules.
Conversion
When a user completes a goal or makes a transaction during a session, a conversion is recorded. Each objective can only report one conversion each session, although every transaction is recorded. Conversion rates are calculated by aggregating all successful conversions into a single percentage. For example, if you have four conversion objectives each having a 10% conversion rate, your overall conversion rate for your site would be 40%. Keep in mind that your site’s total conversation rate might be much beyond 100%, so don’t believe the number of conversions is limited.
Cookie
A cookie is a piece of information that is stored in a website browser. Google Analytics uses cookies to identify users. If someone does not have an existing cookie, then a new cookie will be created and they will appear as a new user in your reports. If someone has an existing cookie, then they will be reported as a returning user and the cookie expiration will be updated.
Cost Analysis
You may compare the success of your advertising based on a variety of measures after uploading third-party advertising data (see Data Import). These metrics include click-through rate, cost-per-click, revenue-per-click, and return on advertising spend.
CPC
Cost-per-click (CPC) may be found in Acquisition statistics and normally refers to users who click through to your website via sponsored advertisements. This includes traffic from associated Google AdWords accounts and campaign-tagged URLs where the medium is ‘cpc’ or ‘paid’.
Cross Devices
The Cross Device reports give information on users who visit your website from numerous devices. Google signals must be enabled in order to generate automatic Cross Device reports. These reports give insights based on aggregated and anonymised data from Google account holders. You may also submit identifiers to Google Analytics, allowing you to leverage Cross Device reporting with user ID.
Custom Dimension & Custom Metric
In addition to the default dimensions and metrics, Google Analytics can be configured to collect
additional data and make it available in your reports. For example, you could configure a custom
dimension to report the authors of each page on your website, to understand performance based
on who is creating content
Custom Segment
Apart from the default (or system) segments, you can also create custom segments to filter the data that is (or is not) included in your reports. Segments can be configured to focus on particular sections of your traffic based on users and sessions. For example, you can create a custom segment to perform detailed analysis on your top-performing customers to understand how they’re engaging with your website.
Data import
You can import additional data into Google Analytics to supplement and extend the standard dimensions and metrics. You can import a range of data including Cost Data from advertising campaigns, Refund Data for ecommerce transactions, User Data, Campaign Data, Geography Data, Content Data, Product Data and Custom Data
Data Stream
To augment and expand the usual dimensions and metrics, you may input new data into Google Analytics. Data from advertising campaigns, refund data from ecommerce transactions, user data, campaign data, geography data, content data, product data, and custom data may all be imported.
Default Reporting Identity
You may configure how Google Analytics combines sessions to report on individual users when you utilise an App + Web property. Google Analytics can employ both User ID and Client ID, or solely Client ID.
Data Retension
You may define a data retention term in Google Analytics to comply with privacy standards. Data that can be used to identify specific persons, such as Client ID, is automatically deleted after 26 months. The data retention term may be adjusted to 14, 26, 38, or 50 months, and you can additionally preserve the data by checking the ‘do not expire automatically’ box. Even after the data retention term has expired, aggregated data will still be available in your reports.
Demographics
Google Analytics can be configured to include user demographics, like age and gender. In order to collect demographic data into your reports you need to enable the ‘Advertising Features’ by navigating to ‘Admin’, then ‘Tracking Info’ and selecting ‘Data Collection’.
Device Category
The Device category allows you to view performance depending on the many devices people are using to interact with your website. You may observe sessions taking place on desktop (including laptops), tablet, and mobile devices.
Dimension
A dimension is an attribute or feature of your users and their activities with your website, and it is one of two types of data that Google Analytics collects. Dimensions are often displayed as a row of data in your reports. Dimensions such as page route, which offers information about the pages visitors have visited, and marketing channel, which provides information about how users found your website, are examples of dimensions. The dimension is displayed in the first column of the regular Google Analytics reports.
Direct
People who put your website’s URL into their browser or clicked a link in an email application (but did not include campaign tags) are considered direct traffic. Other circumstances when Google Analytics is unable to identify the source of the click will also be included in direct sessions. When a known source is utilised, Google Analytics will only assign ‘direct’ as a last option; that source will be ascribed to the session.
Ecommerce Conversion
When someone successfully purchases anything during a session, this is referred to as an ecommerce conversion. Google Analytics provides a variety of ecommerce dimensions and metrics to report on the ecommerce activities of your website.
Enhanced Measurement
When you utilise an App + Web property, you may enable Google Analytics to automatically track particular actions on your website. You may automatically track individuals browsing, clicking outbound links, searching inside your website, watching embedded YouTube videos, and downloading files in addition to pageviews.
Entrance
An entrance is the initial page that someone visits during a session. The ‘entry’ measure shows how many times a page was seen for the first time. When several hit types are given to Google Analytics, this measure is comparable to sessions but might vary.
Event
A custom interaction (or attribute) recorded from your website into Google Analytics, such as tracking video plays integrated on your website. Each event can have up to three dimensions (the event ‘category,”action,’ and optional’label’) as well as a metric (the optional event’value’). Custom implementation is required to track events, which are subsequently reported inside the standard ‘Behaviour’ reports. Event-based objectives can also be configured using events.
Filter
Filters can be applied to reporting views within Google Analytics to include a subset of data (for example, only include data for specific parts of the website), exclude a subset of data (for example, exclude your own sessions on the website), or transform the data (for example, to change the reported page path to include the hostname).
FireBase
Google’s app development platform is called Firebase. Firebase contains a variety of solutions that may be utilised to enhance the functionality of your app. For example, authentication, storage, communications, and other functions. Firebase also allows you to capture and submit data about your app’s users to Google Analytics.
Fire Interaction (or First Click)
This is a Google Analytics Attribution report model that assigns 100% credit to the initial touchpoint before a conversion.
The first interaction grants credit for a conversion to the initial way by which someone found your website. You may use the ‘Model Comparison Tool’ to apply the first interaction (and additional attribution models) to your conversions.
It is critical to understand that the quantity of historical data provided in the attribution reports is limited (see lookback window). Other factors influencing first-interaction statistics include consumers erasing their cookies or utilising numerous devices.
Goal
Goals are used on your website to track desired activities. Subscribing to your email newsletter, sending an enquiry, or enrolling as a member are some examples. Goals may be set up in Google Analytics and can be dependent on individuals visiting a specific page (or pages), triggering an event, having a given number of sessions, or seeing a certain amount of pages.
Goal Abandonment
Destination (or page-based) objectives might contain further pages that lead to a conversion (funnel stages). If someone watches at least one of the funnel phases but does not convert, they are regarded to have abandoned the goal and are included in the goal abandonment measure.
Goal Completion
When a user converts for a certain goal during a session, it is counted as a goal completion. If a user completes a goal many times throughout a session, it will only be considered as a single conversion.
Goal Completion Location
This dimension reports the particular page where a conversion occurred for a destination (or page-based) goal. This is especially useful if you’re including multiple conversion pages for a goal. The goal completion location will also show you the page that was viewed when an event-based or engagement-based (duration and pages per session) goal was triggered.
Goal Value
Within Google Analytics, each objective can have an optional monetary value assigned to it. For each conversion, the goal value can be used to provide a real cash value, a calculated value, or a symbolic value. The event-based goal allows you to retrieve the ‘value’ of the event, whereas the other goal types utilise a fixed (or static) value for each conversion.
Google Ads
Google Ads is paid advertising platform, allowing you to display ads to people searching on Google, third-party search sites (Google Search Partners) and browsing websites and using mobile apps (Google Display Network). Check out our accompanying Google Ads for Charities Guide as a reference for your paid campaigns.
Google Data studio
Google Data Studio is a reporting and dashboard application from Google that allows you to display and visualise data from Google Analytics, Google Sheets, and other data sources.
Google optimize
Google Optimize is Google’s platform for A/B testing, multivariate testing and personalization. Google Optimize allows you to present different variations of content on your website to increase conversions and improve conversion rate.
Google signal
You can begin collecting data into the automated Cross Device reports by enabling Google signals in Google Analytics. Google signals uses aggregated and anonymized data from people logged into their Google account to understand how people engage with your website using multiple devices.
Global Sites Tags
The global site tag (or gtag.js) is the current version of the stand-alone Google Analytics tracking code. Generally, you will want to use Google Tag Manager to implement Google Analytics on your website. However, you do have the option of using the Google Analytics tracking code instead.
Global Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager is a system for managing the deployment of tracking and other tags on your website. Google Tag Manager allows tags to be tested on your website before being deployed live and is designed to reduce the dependence on IT for managing tracking tags.
HIT
Is the method through which data is transferred to Google Analytics before being processed in your reports. The most frequent form of hit happens when a page on your website is browsed. Hits for other sorts of interactions, such as events, are also submitted to Google Analytics.
Interest
By activating ‘Advertising Features’ (browse to ‘Admin’, then ‘Tracking Info’, and finally ‘Data Collection’), you may see your audience’s regions of interest. The categories in the Interests reports correspond to the Interest targeting choices in Google Ads.
Keyword
Google Analytics provides information on the keywords that users use to locate your website. The organic keywords report tells you the phrases visitors used to locate your website when they clicked on a free search engine result. A significant amount of organic keyword traffic is shown as ‘not available,’ indicating that the specific phrase was suppressed by the search engine. The paid keywords report displays keywords from associated Google AdWords accounts as well as campaign-tagged URLs that use the ‘term’ parameter.
Life Time Value (LTV)
The lifetime value metrics, including lifetime revenue per user and lifetime revenue, show you the total value based on users, instead of sessions.
Hostname
The part of your website’s URL that identifies where the Google Analytics tracking code was loaded. For example, if someone viewed https://www.empower.agency/contact then Google Analytics would report on www.empower.agency as the hostname. Viewing the hostnames in Google Analytics can be especially useful if you’ve installed the tracking code on multiple domains (or subdomains)
Landing Page
The landing page is the first page viewed during a session, or in other words, the entrance page. It can be useful to review your landing pages to understand the most popular pages people view as they navigate to your website. This can be used to identify potential opportunities to cross-promote or feature other content from your website.
Last Interaction
When a person converts on your website, the final interaction leading to the conversion is recorded as the method they used to locate your website. The ‘Model Comparison Tool’ allows you to assign conversions to the most recent interaction in order to determine whether channels are better at closing (or finishing) conversions.
Lookback window
The lookback window lets you decide how much previous data is included in the attribution reports. Setting a lookback window of 14 days, for example, will include touchpoints up to 14 days before the conversion. Any touchpoints that occur outside of the lookback window will not be included in the report. The lookback window is set to 30 days by default, however it may be changed to one to 90 days.
Measurement Protocol
The Measurement Protocol enables hits to be delivered directly to Google Analytics without the requirement for Google Analytics monitoring code or Google Tag Manager. This may be used to submit data to Google Analytics from any internet-connected device.
Medium
Medium is one of the four primary factors for reporting and analysing how users accessed your website (along with source, campaign, and channel). The medium describes how the message was conveyed. For example, ‘organic’ refers to free search traffic, ‘cpc’ refers to cost-per-click traffic, and’referral’ refers to inbound connections from other websites.
Metric
A metric is one of two forms of data that Google Analytics gathers. It is often a number, such as a count or a percentage. Metrics are often given as data columns in your reports. Pageviews, which give you the total number of pages read, and users, which tell you how many individuals visited your website, are two examples of metrics.
New User
People who visit your website for the first time within the specified time period. Because users are determined by the Google Analytics tracking code and browser cookies, it is critical to note that people who erase their cookies or access your website using a different device will be recorded as a new user.
New Visitor
A few reports include both new and returning visitors. A new visitor is someone who sees your website for the first time within the specified period frame. If a user has no existing Google Analytics cookies, they will be reported as new. Users that visit your website many times within the period frame are recorded as both new and returning.
When a session covers two days (after midnight), the metrics supplied for the ‘User Type’ dimension may alter, since one ‘User’ will be recorded with two ‘New Users’. This is because the measure ‘New Users’ is calculated based on sessions.
Not provided
Not given in the organic keywords report implies that a search engine disallowed the specific term from being reported. The bulk of not supplied organic keywords are derived from Google search results, where anyone making a search on the secure version of Google (e.g. https://www.google.com) will have their particular organic keyword concealed from analytics programmes such as Google Analytics.
Not Set
Not set can be seen in a variety of reports and indicates that a certain piece of information is not accessible inside the report. In the Location report, for example, not set implies that Google Analytics was unable to detect someone’s precise geographic location when they reached your website. While not set in the Source/Medium report happens when a campaign tagged URL has not been fully formed (for example, if’source’ is not declared, the report will appear as not set).
Organic
People that click on a free link from a search results page are referred to be organic. People clicking on to your website from a free result on a Google search results page, for example.
Page
When someone views material on your website, the page displays the portion of the URL following your domain name (path). For example, if someone visits https://www.empower.agency/contact, the page /contact will be mentioned in the Behaviour reports.
A page visit is classified as a Hit, however it only counts one full page load. If the page only loads 50% of the way, it isn’t normally reported as a page view, unless your tagging masters account for the delayed page load. Consider Page Views to be book pages, rather than website pages.
You wouldn’t count the pages you skipped as reading.
Page Value
Allows you to understand the impact of your website’s pages in driving value based on ecommerce transactions and goal conversions, where a goal value has been set. Each page that led to a conversion shares the value that was generated by the conversion.
Page per sessions
A high-level indicator for user engagement that displays the average number of pageviews each session.
PageView
A pageview is registered when a person views a page on your website. By default, your pages in the Google Analytics pages report are arranged by popularity based on pageviews.
This enables you to know which material is being seen the most frequently.
PII (Personally Identifiable Information)
The Google Analytics Terms of Service prohibit you from include PII (personally identifiable information) in your reports. Email addresses, complete names, and other personal information are included. However, the Terms of Service allow you to collect IDs that can be connected to persons outside of Google Analytics.
Percentage of New Sessions
Shows the percentage of sessions for people who have not previously been to your website. The metric is calculated by dividing the number of new users by the total number of sessions. For example, if 100 people visited your website for the first time out of a total of 200 sessions, then the percentage of new sessions would be reported as 50%.
Previous Page Path
Previous page route is a dimension that displays the page that was visited immediately before another page in a session. Previous page path might be beneficial for evaluating the navigation pathways that visitors take between particular pages on your website.
Property
A Google Analytics account is required to build properties. Each attribute specifies a unique instance of the tracking ID that was used to gather data from a website, set of websites, mobile app, or the Measurement Protocol. Data will be delivered to the relevant tracking ID for each property. After collecting data, it is processed in the reporting view (or views) built under the property.
Referral
When a person goes across to your website from another third-party website, you receive a referral. You can view all of the websites (by domain) that are bringing you traffic in the referrals report. You may also dig down into the referrals report to examine the ‘Referral Path,’ which shows you which pages are leading to your website.
Regular Expression (or Regex)
A sophisticated algorithm for matching patterns in text strings. Regular expressions may be utilised in a variety of areas inside Google Analytics, such as view filters, objectives, segments, table filters, and so on. Find out more about regular expressions.
Returning Visitor
A small number of reports reference returning and new visitors. A returning visitor is reported when someone with existing Google Analytics cookies comes back to your website. Users can be counted as both new and returning if they visit your website multiple times in the date range
Revenue
Sales income from Google Analytics-tracked transactions are reported. Depending on the ecommerce tracking code used, the income amounts may include delivery and tax.
Revenue Per User
Total revenue divided by the number of users shows the average amount generated for each user.
Sample
To expedite report processing, a subset of data is utilised to extrapolate (or estimate) the whole set of data for the report. When you request particular data in your reports and there are more than 500,000 sessions in the property for the given date range, you are sampling. The simplest technique to decrease sampling is to narrow the date range.
Search Querry
The exact phrase someone typed into a search engine before visiting your website.
The phrases might come from sponsored advertising (in the AdWords reports) or from Google organic search results (in the Search Console reports), depending on the report.
Search Term
If your website includes an internal search feature, you may set the Site Search reports to display the specific phrases visitors use while searching your website.
Self-Referral
‘Self-referrals’ are referrals that come from your own website. This can happen if you don’t have the Google Analytics tracking code put on a page (or pages) on your website.
For instance, if a page lacks tracking code or if your website covers many domains. In most circumstances, you’ll want to fix the tracking problem to eliminate (or minimise) self-referrals. This is because when someone clicks from the page (or sites) that caused the self-referral, a new session is generated.
Session
A single visit to your website that includes one or more pageviews, events, ecommerce purchases, and other activities. Because the default session timeout is 30 minutes, if someone is idle on your website for more than 30 minutes, a new session will be reported if they make another activity, such as browsing another page.
For example, if 100 visitors visited your website for the first time out of 200 total sessions, the proportion of new sessions would be 50%.
Session Settings
You may change the default session and campaign timeouts by going to ‘Admin’ and then selecting ‘Tracking Info’ and ‘Session Settings’. The session timeout is set to 30 minutes by default.
This is an industry standard, so only modify it if you have a compelling cause. The campaign timeout is set to six months by default. This implies that the campaign will be credited for any future, direct sessions for the next six months. You can change the campaign timeout if you expect your campaigns to convert in a shorter or longer period of time.
Site Search
Google Analytics may be set up to track visitors who use your website’s internal search function. You can see the search phrases users are using, repeat searches, search categories, the pages people start searching from, and the proportion of sessions that included a search in the site search reports.
Smart Goals
If you are unable to manually create your own goals, Google’s machine learning may be used to identify sessions that are most likely to result in a conversion. These are referred to as Smart Goals.
Social
In the Acquisition reports, social shows as a marketing channel (in the default channel grouping), which automatically includes traffic from social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
The Acquisition reports additionally feature a collection of social reports that can be used to further analyse and report on the success of your inbound social traffic.
Google Analytics may be set up to track users who interact with social sharing widgets integrated on your website. The social plugins report then allows you to track which sites users visit when they use your social sharing widgets, which social networks they utilise, and what actions they perform.
Source
Source is one of the four primary factors for reporting and analysing how users find your website (along with medium, campaign, and channel). The source indicates where the message was seen. For example, a source of ‘google’ indicates that someone discovered your website after conducting a Google search. For more specific insights, utilise source in conjunction with medium. For example, a source of ‘google’ and a medium of ‘cpc’ would be reported for paid clicks from your AdWords ads.
Transaction
A single transaction made on your website and recorded in Google Analytics. Each transaction can include one or more goods purchased during the checkout process, and each transaction is connected with a transaction ID that is provided to Google Analytics from your ecommerce system using specific ecommerce tracking code. The number of transactions, total revenue, and ecommerce conversion rate are often the major indicators of an ecommerce website’s performance. Each ecommerce transaction might include information such as the overall transaction amount, products purchased, delivery information, and more.
Tracking ID
A tracking ID is inserted in the tracking code (or Google Tag Manager tag) to send hits to the relevant property inside Google Analytics. The tracking ID begins with ‘UA’ and is followed by a string of digits. The number between the dashes represents the Google Analytics account’s unique identity, and the number at the end indicates a property inside the account.
Transactions Per User
The total number of transactions multiplied by the total number of users. Based on ecommerce transactions, this indicator can give insight into how well your website is working.
Unique Pageview
Even if a page was visited numerous times in a single session, it is only counted once. For example, if someone arrived on your homepage, then browsed to the ‘about us’ page, and then back to your homepage, the homepage would have one unique pageview (even if the page was seen twice during the session).
URL Builder
Google URL Builder is a tool that allows you to add campaign tags to your inbound URLs. It’s especially useful if you’re new to campaign tags because it has a visual interface. Google’s URL Builder Tool may be found here.
User
A single user who visits your website (technically, a unique browser cookie). Each user can visit your website many times; for example, one user might establish three sessions on your website, each with multiple pageviews. By default, each unique browser cookie is counted as a different user, which means that someone viewing your website on several devices (each with their own browser cookie) will result in the reporting of more than one user.
User Explorer
The User Explorer report allows you to view the cookie IDs that have been created in people’s browsers. This allows you to see how people interact with your website across multiple sessions.
Users Flow
The Users Flow report is a visual representation of how users navigate and interact with your website. For example, you can see the paths people take as they view the content on your website after they land.
User ID
A unique identifier used on your website to combine sessions from a recognised individual. You can provide an ID to Google Analytics to allow a particular set of cross-device analytics when you can identify someone (for example, using an ID from your CRM or another system).
User Timings
The User Timings functionality allows you to report on specified time intervals. This may be used to report on the loading time of custom elements on your website, such as AJAX, or any custom interval, such as the time it takes to finish an application form.
User ID Coverage
The User ID Coverage report becomes accessible in the regular reporting views when you establish a dedicated User ID view in Google Analytics. The report displays the percentage of users who have been assigned an ID vs those who have not.
UTM Tag
UTM tags are the individual query parameters used to make up a campaign tagged URL. The UTM tags include utm_name, utm_source, utm_medium, utm_term, utm_content and the lesser known utm_id. View more info on UTM tags.
View
There are one or more reporting views containing data from your website within each Google Analytics property. Views can contain the entire collection of data from the tracking code or only a subset of it (through filters). Each reporting view has its own set of goals and configurations.