This glossary will serve as a firm foundation for your growing web analytics knowledge, and can continue to be a great reference any time you find yourself asking, "What does that mean again?" 

Acquisition

You can understand how people find your website using the Acquisition reports. The reports present data based on the source and medium of your users, along with other acquisition dimensions.

Active Users

Real Time and Home reports show you how many people are currently viewing content on your website.
30-Day Active Users are unique users who visited your site at least once in the last 28 or 30 days for a selected period of time.
Note: 7-day active users may also include 1-day active users. In the same way, 28-day active users may also include 14-day active users.

Active Pages

When viewing the Real-Time reports, Active Pages shows you the pages people are currently viewing on your website.

Average Session Duration

Provides a top-level view of how long users are spending on your website.

Bounce

A bounce is reported when a user's session only contains a single page view. The idea is that someone comes to your website and they "bounce" away and leave after only viewing a single page.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions with a single page view. Bounce rate can provide top-level insights about the performance of your content.

Channel

Channels provide top-level groupings of your inbound marketing. Each channel combines source and medium so you can understand overall performance.

Conversion

A conversion is reported whenever a user completes a goal or makes a purchase during a session. Each goal will report a maximum of one conversion per session, while every transaction is reported.

Demographics

Google Analytics can be configured to include user demographics, like age and gender.

Direct

Direct traffic includes people who typed your website's URL into their browser or clicked a link in an email application (that didn't include campaign tags). Direct sessions will also include other cases where Google Analytics is unable to identify the source of the click.

Entrance

The first page that someone views during a session is known as an entrance. You can see the number of times a page was viewed first using the "entrance" metric.

Hit

Is the way data is sent to Google Analytics before it's processed into your reports. The most common type of hit occurs when a page is viewed on your website.

Impressions

Is the way data is sent to Google Analytics before it's processed into your reports. The most common type of hit occurs when a page is viewed on your website.

Interests

An impression means that a user has seen (or potentially seen) a link to your site in Search, Discover, or News.

Keyword

Google Analytics provides details about the keywords people use to find your website. The organic keywords report shows you the terms people used to find your website when clicking on a free result from a search engine.

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.

Medium

Medium is one of the four main dimensions (along with the source, campaign and channel) for reporting and analyzing how people found your website. Medium tells you how the message was communicated.

Metric

One of two types of data that Google Analytics collects, a metric is typically a number, like a count or a percentage. Metrics are typically presented as columns of data within your reports.

New User

People that visit your website for the first time in the selected date range. Since users are based on the Google Analytics tracking code and browser cookies, it's important to highlight that people who cleared their cookies or access your website using a different device will be reported as a new user.

Organic

Organic refers to people clicking on a free link from a search results page. For example, people clicking through to your website from a free result on a Google search results page.

Page

The page shows the part of the URL after your domain name (path) when someone has viewed content on your website.

Page Value

Allows you to understand the impact of your web site's pages in driving value based on e-commerce 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.

Pages Per Session

A top-level metric for user engagement showing the average number of page views in each session.

Pageview

A page view is reported when a page has been viewed by a user on your website.

Referral

A referral is reported when a user clicks through to your website from another third-party website. The referrals report allows you to see all of the websites (by domain) that are sending you traffic.

Search Term or Query

The actual term somebody used in a search engine before clicking through to your website.

Session

A single visit to your website, consisting of one or more page views, along with events, e-commerce transactions and other interactions. The default session timeout is 30 minutes, which means that if someone is inactive on your website for over 30 minutes, then a new session will be reported if they perform another interaction, for example, viewing another page.

Source

The source is one of the four main dimensions (along with medium, campaign and channel) for reporting and analyzing how people found your website. Source tells you where the message was seen.

Unique Pageview

Counts a page once even if it was viewed multiple times within a single session.

User

An individual person browsing your website (technically, a unique browser cookie).

Users Flow

The Users Flow report is a visual representation of how users navigate and interact with your website.