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Quick Guide to Understanding Google Analytics Terms

Whether you’re the one tracking your websites Google analytics or you have an SEO consultant setting things up for you, the terms often associated with Google Analytics can be a bit confusing. If you’re truly wanting to utilize this feature, it’s important to know what you’re going to be looking at (or hearing about), to understand the information that has been gathered.

We thought we’d provide you with a quick breakdown of the most common terms found in Google Analytics:

Sessions: Within a selected date range, there is a total number of sessions shown. A session in “Google” terms refers to the amount of time a user is actively engaged with your website. This includes usage data (meaning screen views, events, ecommerce, etc.) is associated with a session.

Users: Users refer to those that have had at least one “session” within the selected date range. This includes both new and returning users.

Pageviews: refers to the total number of pages that were viewed on your website (this includes ALL pages). It is also important to note that repeated views of a single page by a user are counted.

Pages/Sessions: This refers to the average number of pages viewed per session. For example, if your analytics say that you have 1.61 page/views, this means that the average person who is visiting your website views 1.61 pages of your website.

Avg. Session Duration: refers to the average amount of time that a user spends on your website.

Bounce Rate: the meaning of bounce rate is a percentage calculation of the users who access your website but then leave your website after only viewing one page. If you have a small website it’s likely that your bounce rate percentage will be higher.

Percentage of New Sessions: this is simply an estimate of the percentage of first time visits.

If you’re new to Google Analytics, there’s a very helpful tool within that tells you exactly what each term means, all you have to do is hover over the term and it will automatically pop up (like so):



Reference for Terms: Google Analytics Reporting

 
Posted: 2015-09-01 2:14:33 PM by Global Administrator