Reference

Analytics glossary.

58 terms from web analytics, ads and attribution. Each one defined plainly, with how tools count it.

A

Ad blocker: Browser software that blocks ads and, often, the tracking scripts and pixels that measure them.
Attribution: The rule that decides which marketing touch gets credit for a sale, signup or other conversion.
Attribution window: How long after a click or view a conversion can still be credited to it.

Bot traffic: Visits made by automated software rather than people: crawlers, scrapers, monitors and fake clicks.
Bounce rate: The share of visits or sessions that ended without engagement; each tool defines it differently.

Click ID: A unique value an ad platform adds to the link when someone clicks an ad, so it can match later conversions to that click.
Consent banner: The notice that asks visitors to accept or decline cookies and similar tracking on a website.
Consent mode: Google's way for its tags to change behavior based on the visitor's consent choices.
Conversion: An action you count as success: a purchase, a signup, a booked call, a form sent.
Conversion rate: The share of visits, sessions or users that converted.
Conversion window: The Google Ads setting for how long after an ad interaction a conversion can be recorded.
Conversions API: Meta's server-to-server interface for sending conversion events, alongside or instead of the pixel.
Cookieless tracking: Measuring visits without storing cookies or other data on the visitor's device.
CPA: Cost per acquisition: ad spend divided by the number of conversions.

Dark social: Shares through private channels, such as messaging apps and email, that arrive without a referrer.
Data thresholds: GA4 rules that withhold small rows of data so individual users cannot be identified.
Data-driven attribution: A model that learns how to split credit from your own conversion paths, instead of a fixed rule.
Direct traffic: Visits that arrived with no referrer, no campaign tags and no click id, so the tool cannot tell where they came from.

Engagement rate: In GA4, the share of sessions that were engaged.
Enhanced conversions: Google Ads' feature that sends hashed customer details with conversions to improve matching.
Event deduplication: Merging the same conversion reported twice, such as by the browser and the server, so it counts once.
Event Match Quality: Meta's score for how well the customer details on your server events can be matched to Meta accounts.
Exit rate: The share of a page's views that were the last in their visit.

fbclid: Meta's click id, added to links people click on Facebook and Instagram.
First-party cookie: A cookie set by the site the visitor is on, readable only by that site.
First-touch attribution: A model that gives all the credit for a conversion to the first known touch.

gclid: Google Ads' click id, added to landing page links by auto-tagging.
Global Privacy Control: A browser signal asking websites not to sell or share the visitor's personal data.

Incrementality: The conversions an ad caused that would not have happened without it.
Intelligent Tracking Prevention: Safari's set of limits on cookies and storage used for tracking.

Key event: GA4's name for an event you mark as important to your business, such as a purchase, a signup or a booked call.

Landing page: The first page a visitor sees in a visit, or a page built for one campaign.
Landing page experience: Google Ads' estimate of how relevant and useful a landing page is for the people who click an ad.
Last-touch attribution: A model that gives all the credit for a conversion to the final touch before it.
Lifetime value: The total revenue, or profit, a customer brings over their whole relationship with you.
Lift test: An experiment that compares people who saw ads with a held-back group to measure the ads' real effect.

Marketing mix model: A statistical model that estimates each channel's effect on sales from aggregate spend and sales over time.
MER: Marketing efficiency ratio: total revenue divided by total marketing spend.
Multi-touch attribution: Any attribution model that splits credit across more than one touch.

Referrer: The address of the page a visitor came from, sent by the browser when they follow a link.
ROAS: Return on ad spend: revenue credited to ads divided by what the ads cost.

Sampling: Building a report from a portion of the data and scaling the result up to estimate the whole.
Server-side tagging: Running marketing and analytics tags on a server you control, which then forwards data to each vendor.
Server-side tracking: Sending analytics or conversion events from a server, rather than from the visitor's browser.
Session: A group of pageviews and events from one browser, ended by a period of inactivity or another rule.
Session timeout: How long a visitor can be inactive before their session ends and the next action starts a new one.
Short link: A short address on a link domain that redirects to a longer one, counting the click on the way.

Third-party cookie: A cookie set by a domain other than the one in the address bar, used to follow people across sites.

Unique visitor: A browser or person counted once in a period, however many times they visited.
UTM parameters: Tags added to the end of a link that tell analytics tools the source, medium and campaign of the visit.
utm_campaign: The UTM parameter that names the specific push, offer or promotion a link belongs to.
utm_content: The UTM parameter that tells apart links or creatives within the same campaign.
utm_medium: The UTM parameter that names the kind of channel: social, cpc, email, sms, qr.
utm_source: The UTM parameter that names who sent the visit: a site, app, newsletter or partner.
utm_term: The UTM parameter originally made for the paid search keyword, often used for the ad set or audience.

View-through conversion: A conversion credited to an ad the person saw but did not click.