Web Analytics Glossary

A method for comparing two versions of a page, flow, or feature to see which one performs better against a defined goal.

Software that blocks ads, trackers, analytics scripts, and other third-party resources before they load in the browser.

Automated notifications that warn teams about traffic spikes, drops, errors, uptime issues, or other analytics changes.

A conversion where a channel or touchpoint helped influence the final action but was not the last interaction before it.

The rule set an analytics platform uses to assign conversion credit across traffic sources, campaigns, and touchpoints.

The average time visitors spend on a website during one session, useful for judging engagement and content depth.

The process of detecting and excluding automated bot traffic so analytics reports better reflect real human visitors.

Visits and requests generated by automated crawlers, scrapers, monitors, malicious scripts, or other non-human clients.

The percentage of sessions where a visitor leaves after viewing one page without triggering another meaningful interaction.

A prompt that asks a visitor to take the next step, such as signing up, booking a demo, downloading a guide, or buying.

The preferred URL for a page when duplicate or similar versions exist, helping search engines consolidate ranking signals.

The California Consumer Privacy Act, a privacy law that gives California residents rights over how businesses use personal data.

The percentage of people who click a link, ad, search result, email link, or button after seeing it.

Software that collects, stores, and applies visitor consent choices for cookies, analytics, ads, and other data processing.

A completed action that matters to a business, such as a signup, purchase, form submission, activation step, or download.

The percentage of visitors or sessions that complete a desired action during a selected reporting period.

The practice of improving pages, journeys, and offers so more visitors complete the actions that matter.

A small piece of browser-stored data that websites can use for preferences, sessions, measurement, or tracking.

A notice that asks visitors to accept, reject, or configure cookies and similar tracking technologies.

Analytics measurement that does not store tracking cookies in the visitor browser while still reporting traffic and events.

Google-defined user experience metrics that measure loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability on real pages.

The amount an advertiser pays each time someone clicks an ad, often used to evaluate paid search and paid social efficiency.

A named action tracked inside a website or app, such as clicking a pricing button, submitting a form, or creating a project.

The average cost to acquire a new customer, calculated from sales and marketing spend over a defined period.

The estimated total revenue or gross profit a customer generates over their relationship with a business.

Traffic from private sharing channels such as messaging apps, email, documents, and communities that often appears as direct.

A contract that defines how a processor handles personal data on behalf of a controller under privacy laws such as GDPR.

The physical or legal region where analytics data is stored and processed, often important for compliance and governance.

The policy that defines how long analytics, event, user, and operational data is kept before deletion or aggregation.

Traffic where the analytics platform cannot identify a referring website, campaign tag, search engine, or known source.

A percentage that shows how often visitors or users interact meaningfully with a page, product, or campaign.

The practice of collecting and analyzing frontend or backend errors so teams can fix broken user experiences faster.

The practice of recording user actions such as clicks, submissions, purchases, downloads, and product interactions.

The percentage of page views where a page was the final page in a session before the visitor left the website.

A controlled test that exposes visitors or users to variants and measures which version performs better against a goal.

A switch that lets teams enable, disable, target, or gradually roll out product features without deploying new code.

A cookie set by the website domain a visitor is currently using, usually for sessions, preferences, or same-site analytics.

Data collected directly from your own audience, website, product, or customers rather than purchased from external brokers.

A sequence of steps visitors move through before reaching a goal, such as landing page, signup, checkout, and payment.

The point in a funnel where visitors leave before completing the next step or reaching the final conversion.

The European Union privacy regulation that governs how organizations collect, process, store, and protect personal data.

The setup and measurement of important website or product outcomes such as signups, purchases, leads, and activations.

Google Analytics 4, often called GA4, is Google's event-based analytics platform for websites and apps.

A page status that determines whether search engines are allowed and able to include the page in search results.

A network address assigned to a device or connection, often used for routing, approximate geolocation, security, and abuse prevention.

A browser-side runtime error that can break user interactions, tracking, forms, checkout flows, or product features.

The page a visitor lands on after clicking a search result, ad, campaign link, referral link, or social post.

An attribution model that gives full conversion credit to the final known source or touchpoint before conversion.

The visitors currently active on a website, usually shown in real time with their pages, sources, and locations.

An HTML summary of a page that can appear in search results and influence search click-through rate.

Attribution that distributes conversion credit across multiple channels or touchpoints in a customer journey.

Unpaid traffic from search engines, typically driven by ranking pages, technical SEO, content quality, and search intent.

How quickly a page loads and becomes usable, including server response, asset loading, rendering, and Core Web Vitals.

The HTML title of a page, used by browsers and search engines to describe the page topic in tabs and results.

A tracked instance of a page being loaded or viewed, often counted every time a visitor opens or navigates to a page.

Information that can identify a person directly or indirectly, such as an email address, user ID, precise location, or IP address.

A shareable analytics dashboard that lets people view selected metrics without needing full account access.

Performance monitoring based on real visitor devices, browsers, networks, and pages rather than lab tests alone.

Visitors who arrive after clicking a link from another website, excluding common search engines and tagged campaigns.

The source URL or origin the browser reports when a visitor clicks from one page to another.

A profitability metric that compares the value generated by a campaign, channel, or project against its cost.

Analytics that connects traffic, campaigns, users, events, and conversions to revenue and payment data.

The process of connecting revenue back to the channels, campaigns, pages, and touchpoints that influenced it.

A text file that tells search engine crawlers which parts of a website they are allowed or disallowed to crawl.

A measurement of how far visitors scroll down a page, often used to evaluate content engagement.

The analysis of search queries, impressions, clicks, rankings, pages, and search visibility over time.

The practice of improving a website so search engines can discover, understand, and rank its pages for relevant queries.

The word or phrase a person enters into a search engine before seeing or clicking a search result.

The practice of splitting analytics data into groups by source, country, device, browser, campaign, behavior, or user property.

The search engine results page shown after a query, including organic results, ads, snippets, and other features.

Analytics collection performed from a server rather than only from browser JavaScript, often used for reliability and control.

A group of interactions from one visitor within a defined time window, usually ending after inactivity or a new campaign source.

A recorded reconstruction of a visitor session that helps teams debug journeys, friction, errors, and UX issues.

A file or page that lists important URLs so search engines and users can discover website content more easily.

A cookie set by a domain other than the website a visitor is viewing, commonly used for cross-site advertising and tracking.

The estimated amount of time a visitor spends on a page before navigating away, closing the tab, or becoming inactive.

A grouped source of website visits, such as organic search, referral, direct, paid search, email, social, or display.

A sudden increase in website visits, events, errors, or conversions compared with the normal baseline.

An estimate of one distinct visitor during a reporting period, counted once even if they view multiple pages.

Automated checks that verify whether a website, endpoint, or service is reachable and responding as expected.

A browser-provided string that identifies the client application, operating system, device type, and browser version.

A view of known user or visitor activity that groups sessions, events, attributes, and journey history.

A campaign tracking parameter added to URLs so analytics tools can identify source, medium, campaign, term, and content.

The collection and analysis of website traffic, visitor behavior, conversion, performance, and acquisition data.

The ongoing measurement of website availability, performance, errors, and traffic health so issues are caught quickly.