Analytics terms, explained simply

A plain-English A–Z glossary of the most common website analytics terms — from acquisition to UTM parameters — so you always know what you are looking at.

Analytics has its own language. This glossary defines every common term in plain English so you can read reports, have conversations with us, and understand your data with confidence.

Quick summary

This is your A–Z reference guide for analytics terms. Bookmark it and return whenever a term in your report or in GA4 has you stumped. Every definition is written in plain English — no jargon.

Acquisition

How visitors find and arrive at your website. In GA4, the Traffic acquisition report shows where your visitors came from — search, social, email, and so on.

The average time your site was in focus in a visitor's browser. Google calculates it as total engagement time divided by the number of active users, so it is a per-person average, not a per-visit one. There is a separate metric, average engagement time per session, for the per-visit figure.

Average order value (AOV)

The average amount spent per transaction in an online store. GA4 has no metric by that name, so work it out as purchase revenue ÷ number of transactions. Do not use GA4's Total revenue metric for this: that one also includes subscriptions and advertising revenue.

Average position

In Google Search Console, the average position of the topmost result from your site in Google search results. Position 1 is the top result.

Bounce rate

In GA4, the percentage of sessions that were not engaged — the exact inverse of engagement rate. This is not the old Universal Analytics meaning of "visited one page and left". A high bounce rate is not always bad; it depends on the page. Bounce rate is not in most reports by default, so it has to be added to the report first.

Branded search

Search queries that include your business or brand name. Non-branded searches are general queries that do not mention your brand.

Channel

A category of traffic source. Common channels in GA4 include Direct, Organic Search, Organic Social, Paid Search, Paid Social, Email, Referral, and AI Assistant (arrivals from tools like ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot). Note there is no plain "Social" channel — paid and unpaid social are counted separately. GA4's default channel groups cannot be edited, but you can create custom ones.

Click-through rate (CTR)

In Google Search Console: the percentage of search impressions that resulted in a click. Calculated as: clicks ÷ impressions × 100.

Conversion

A specific action a visitor takes that you have defined as valuable — a form submission, purchase, phone-number click, and so on. In GA4 these are now called key events. "Conversion" in GA4 has a narrower meaning: an action used to measure and optimise Google Ads campaigns.

Conversion rate

The percentage of sessions that produce a valuable action. On screen in GA4 the metric is named Session key event rate: sessions in which a key event happened ÷ total sessions. There is also a User key event rate, which uses users as the denominator instead — worth knowing about, because the same site has two different "conversion rates" depending on which one you read.

A small text file stored in a visitor's browser. Google Analytics stores a client ID in a first-party cookie named _ga so it can tell one visitor's sessions apart from another's. It does not store that client ID when analytics storage is switched off through consent mode.

Core Web Vitals

Three measurements of real visitor experience that Google reports on in Search Console: LCP (how long the largest thing on the page takes to appear), INP (how quickly the page responds when someone clicks or taps), and CLS (how much the layout shifts around unexpectedly). Google's ranking systems use Core Web Vitals, alongside many other signals.

Data stream

In GA4, the connection between a website (or app) and a GA4 property. Most websites have one web data stream.

Dimensions

In analytics reports, dimensions are the descriptive attributes of your data — page URL, traffic source, device type, country. They describe what or who you are measuring.

Direct traffic

Google defines Direct as the channel for visitors who arrive via a saved link or by typing your URL. In practice it also collects visits where no source information reached GA4 at all, so it is partly a catch-all.

E-commerce tracking

Extended GA4 tracking that captures purchase data — revenue, transactions, product views, add-to-carts, and checkout steps. It is not automatic: the e-commerce events have to be sent from your site or your Tag Manager container.

Engaged session

A session where the visitor was genuinely active. GA4 counts a session as engaged if it lasted longer than about 10 seconds, or included a key event, or included two or more page or screen views.

Engagement rate

The percentage of sessions that were engaged sessions. A higher engagement rate means more visitors are genuinely interested in your content. Like bounce rate, it is not in most reports by default and has to be added to the report.

Events

In GA4, everything is recorded as an event — page views, clicks, form submissions, purchases. GA4 is "event-based" tracking rather than the session-based model of older analytics systems.

Filter

A setting in GA4 that stops some incoming data from being processed, so it never reaches your reports. GA4 offers two data filters: internal traffic, which filters out visitors on an IP address or range you specify (so your own visits do not inflate your data), and developer traffic, which filters out activity from people using debug mode.

GA4

Google Analytics 4 — the current version of Google's website analytics tool, free to use. It replaced Universal Analytics, which stopped processing data on 1 July 2023.

Goal

The Universal Analytics term for an action you counted as valuable. GA4 first called these "conversions" and now calls them key events. If someone says "goals," they mean key events.

Google Search Console (GSC)

A free Google tool that shows how your website performs in Google search results — impressions, clicks, rankings, and technical health.

Google Tag Manager (GTM)

A free Google tool that manages all tracking code (tags) on your website from one central place, without requiring direct edits to your site's code.

Impression

In Google Search Console: one instance of your page appearing in Google search results, whether or not the user clicked.

Indexing

The process by which Google discovers and adds your pages to its search results database. A page that is "indexed" can appear in Google search.

Key event

GA4's current term for an event that measures something important to your business. Any event you collect can be marked as a key event — for example form_submit, purchase, or a custom event set up for clicks on your phone number. Standard properties can mark up to 30 events as key events.

Landing page

The first page a visitor sees when they arrive on your site. This could be your homepage, a blog post, a service page, or any other page — it depends how they found you.

Metrics

In analytics reports, metrics are the numbers — sessions, conversions, revenue, engagement rate. They quantify what happened.

New users

The number of people who visited your site for the first time, counted by GA4 from the first_visit event. Because it is recognised by a browser cookie, the same person on a new device or browser counts as new again.

Organic search

Traffic from people who clicked a non-paid result in a search engine (e.g. Google). Compare with "Paid Search."

Pageview / View

One instance of a page being loaded. GA4 records it as a page_view event, and the metric in reports is called Views. Repeated views of the same page are counted. Universal Analytics also had a "Unique Pageviews" metric; GA4 has no equivalent.

Paid search

Traffic from people who clicked a paid advertisement in search results (e.g. Google Ads).

Property

In GA4, a property is your website (or app), and it holds its own data. Underneath it sits a data stream, which carries the Measurement ID (it starts with G-) that identifies your site.

Realtime report

A GA4 report showing recent activity on your site: active users in the last 5 minutes and in the last 30 minutes. Useful for testing tracking or watching a campaign launch. Google describes it as a best-effort service, so occasional delays are normal.

Referral

Traffic from visitors who clicked a link to your site on another website.

Returning users

Visitors who have been to your site before (on the same device and browser).

Session

A single visit to your website. It starts when a visitor arrives, and by default it ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. There is no limit on how long a session can last.

Source / medium

In GA4, the traffic source and medium together identify where visitors came from. For example: "google / organic" means they found you via organic Google search.

Tag

A piece of code that runs on your website and sends data to a third-party tool (GA4, Facebook Pixel, etc.). Managed via Google Tag Manager.

Traffic

The general term for website visitors and visits.

Trigger

In Google Tag Manager, a rule that determines when a tag fires. For example: "fire the GA4 tag on every page."

Users

The "Users" column in GA4 reports is the Active users metric: distinct people who had an engaged session or otherwise registered engagement, not simply everyone who loaded a page. GA4 also has a separate Total users metric you can add to a report. One user can have multiple sessions, and the same person counts again on a different device or browser.

UTM parameters

Extra text added to the end of a URL to track which campaign, channel, or specific link a visitor came from. Used in email, social media, and ads. Google lists nine of them; the three to always set are utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign. Values are case sensitive.

Vanity metrics

Numbers that look impressive but do not directly indicate business success — such as total pageviews or social follower count, when used without conversion context.

Web analytics

The collection, measurement, and analysis of data about website visitors and their behaviour.

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Analytics terms, explained simply

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