Here you’ll find common terms in the universe of Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is a very useful tool for measuring and optimizing your website or app. However, the number of graphs and different terms can be intimidating.
We’ve compiled a list of typical Google Analytics vocabulary to help you demystify the tool!
Conversion
Everything you consider to be a goal to be achieved. It doesn’t have to be a monetary value, as it really depends on the goal of your business. For example: for an e-commerce, it could be a sale, for a blog it could be time on page. Other common examples include: subscribing to a newsletter, downloading a file, or sharing on social networks.
Dimension
These are attributes that organize your data. Examples would be: countries, gender, age, pages, browser, etc.
Cookie
A small piece of code saved by your browser that acts as a tracker for user identification.
Events
Everything that happens on your site and is recorded within GA4. Examples: page view, link click, watching a video, scrolling down, downloading, etc. Note: the equivalent in Universal Analytics would be ‘Hit’.
Hit
Everything that happens on your site and is recorded within Universal Analytics. Examples: page view and e-commerce view. Note: the equivalent in GA4 is ‘Event’.
Metrics
In a very simple way, these are numbers that count something. For example: the number of new sessions, or new users. Whenever the question is along the lines of: How many people/sessions/etc…? and the answer is a quantity, it’s a metric. Note: not all numbers are metrics. For example, age brackets are represented by numbers (18 years, 20 years, 30 years…), and are dimensions. However, the number of people of a certain age performing an action: metric.
Segment
A filter that organizes users, sessions, or hits into subsets. Examples: users who have previously purchased, sessions where a purchase occurred, sales over $10, etc.
Sessions
The number of times your site has been viewed. It’s not the same as the number of people, as if the same person enters your site on two different occasions, it counts as two sessions.
Engaged Sessions
The number of visits that lasted more than 10 seconds, had a conversion event, or had two or more page views. Basically: people who have visited your website and have actually spent time viewing things, reading articles, etc.
Engagement Rate
The percentage of sessions with interactions.
Users
The easiest explanation is that it’s each of the people who visit your site. However, what identifies a user is a combination of a cookie, Google account, etc. A person who has already visited your website and, for example, accesses it with an incognito window would be identified as a new user.
Missing any word? Have you come across any term that’s not on this list?
Leave it in the comments and we’ll explain it! 🙂