Glossary of Common Google Analytics Metrics
Metric | Definition/Purpose | Access |
Sessions | A visit to the website consisting of one or more pageviews, along with events, ecommerce transactions and other interactions. | Life Cycle → Engagement → Events →Scroll to table columns labeled “sessions” and “sessions per user” |
Average Session Duration | Provides a top-level view of how long users are spending on the website. | Life Cycle → Engagement → Pages and Screens → horizontally scroll to “Average Session Duration “column. |
Path Through the Site | See the previous pages users went to before arriving at this page and the pages users went to after they were on this page. | For this report I used a “path explorer” custom report. Simply put, you can see how your users/visitors use the website/app. You can see what kind of events/pages occurred first, and if you click on a certain branch, you can see what pages/events occurred after that. |
Referral | Shows all the websites (by domain) that are sending traffic. | Life Cycle → Acquisition → Referral Traffic Report |
Site Content Reports | Provides various content-focused views showing how users interact with site content. All Pages: Shows behavioral stats on individual pages of the website. Content Pages: Like the “all Pages” report but instead groups pages by the sub-directory which they reside on the website. Landing Pages: Focus on examining landing page behavior and metrics. Exit Pages: Highlights data related to where users leave the website. | Exit Reports: Explore → Click “Site Content Reports: Exit Pages” Landing Pages: Life Cycle → Engagement → Landing Page All Pages: Life Cycle → Engagement → Pages and Screens Content Pages for each institution: Life Cycle → Engagement → Pages and Screens → Click Edit Comparison → Select ‘Page Path and Screen Class → Type Desired URL → Remove Existing Comparisons → Click Apply → New data Appears for just that school → Export as CSV |
Bounce Rate | The percentage of sessions with users who visit only one page on a website before leaving. Bounce rate by traffic source view each individual channel that led traffic to the website. | Life Cycle → Engagement → Pages and Screens → horizontally scroll to “Bounce Rate” column
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Search Terms | Terms users are utilizing as they search the website. | Realtime: Life Cycle → Engagement → Events → Scroll down to table and click “view_search_results” → in the table on the right hand side any search terms in the past 30 minutes will appear. Custom Report: Go to “Explore” → Click “Search Terms/Keywords” Report |
Number of Pageviews | Pageviews is the total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are counted. | Life Cycle → Engagement → Pages and Screens → View table (first column is Views and third column is Views per User) |
Mode of Access | view performance based on the different devices people are using to experience the website. | Life Cycle → Tech →Tech Overview → Scroll down to “Users by Operating System” Life Cycle → Tech →Tech Overview → Scroll down to “Users by Platform/device category” |
Unique pageviews | Unique Pageview tracks a view of a page without counting duplicates from the same user during the same session. | GA-4 has removed unique pageviews and replaces them with users and views. Life Cycle → Engagement →Pages and Screens → horizontally scroll to “users” and “views” columns. Views represents a view of a page on your site, and is identical to the UA Pageview Users represents the number of users that visited a specific page |
Users from referring site | Shows pages that refer visitors to this page. | Life Cycle → Acquisition → Referral Traffic Report |
Users directed from search engines | Shows which pages on the website that led visitors to this specific page. | Life Cycle → Acquisition → Referral Traffic Report |
Location | Tracks user’s location based on IP address. | User → Demographic Details: Country |
Returning vs New Users | New users are users who have never been to the website, according to Google’s tracking; returning users have visited your site before. | See custom report in “explore” tab OR Life Cycle → Acquisition → Referral Traffic Report |
Number of New Users | New users are users who have never been to the website | Life Cycle → Acquisition → User Acquisition |