Common Google Anlytics Metrics and Definitions:

Benchmarking: Google Analytics gives users a view into how their Website is performing. Benchmarking allows you to compare your site's Analytics data, including visits, page views, bounce rate, average time on site and other metrics against data from other Websites.

Bounce Rate: The percentage of visits in which the visitor only views one page of your Website before leaving is known as the Bounce Rate. A high Bounce Rate can indicate that your pages are not relevant to what your visitors are looking for.

Click: The single instance of a user following a hyperlink to another page or to initiate an action.

Conversion: This is what occurs when a goal is completed. Conversions happen when a visitor comes to your site and completes a desired goal or action. Completing a purchase and submitting a contact form are both examples "conversions". With Google Analytics you can create customized goals so you can measure user actions that are important to your Website.

Cookie: Data used to remember information from website visitors.

Direct Traffic: Visits to your site where the user types your URL into their browser's address bar or when a visitor uses a bookmark to get to your Website. Direct traffic typical originates from visitors who know your brand and or Website URL.

Filter: A guideline that includes or excludes specific data from analytics reports.

Funnels: Series of steps a visitor completes to reach an end goal. Creating funnels can show you where visitors abandon the process during the path to conversion.

Goal: A measure of something you want to track in Google Analytics that you define as a success.

Goal Conversion Rate: The percentage of visits on a site where the visitor completes a goal or completes a conversion.

Impression: The display of a referral link or advertisement on a web page.

Keywords: These are the words that visitors use to find your Website when using a search engine. This information shows you what searchers are actually looking for when they find your Website.

Landing Page: The first page a visitor views during a session.

Match Type: Defines how Google Analytics identifies a URL to include or exclude for goals and funnels (head match, exact match and regular expression match).

New Visitors: Internet users who have not previously or recently visited your site are considered new visitors.

Organic Traffic: Visitors who come to your Website after adding a keyword in a search engine and clicking on a result that leads to your website.

Paid Traffic: Visitors who come to your Website from Google AdWords ads, paid search engine keywords and other online paid ad campaigns.

Page View: The amount of times visitors arrive on individual pages of your Website.

Query Parameter: A VARIABLE=VALUE pair that follows the question mark ("?") in a URL. Example: http://www.example.com/search?q=foo contains the query parameter q=foo

Query Variable: The VARIABLE portion of the VARIABLE=VALUE pair that makes up a query parameter. Variables store information such as search terms entered into a search engine. In the above example, the "q" in "q=foo" is the query variable.

Referring Sites: Other Websites that refer (VIA a link) visitors to your Website are called referring sites.

Regular Expression Match: One of three different match types that Google Analytics defines to identify a URL for either a goal or a funnel. Special characters can be used that enable wildcard and flexible matching. This is useful if your visitors are coming from multiple sub domains or if you use dynamic session IDs.

Request URI: The string at the end of a URL after the ".com" in your Web address is the request URI.

Returning Visitor: A returning visitor is a user who has been to your Website and has come back. When visitors return to a Website, it demonstrates that the Website is of interest to them.

Search Engines: The three main search engines are Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Google Analytics segments your traffic data so you can see which search engines are driving traffic to your Website, and how much traffic each search engine are generating.

Time on Site: The average length of time a visitor spends accessing your site within a specified time period.

Top Exit Pages: Pages on your Website that visitors leave from.

Top Landing Pages: The first pages that users land on when visiting your website.

Tracking Code: A small snippet of code that is inserted into the body of an HTML page. The tracking code captures information about visits to a page.

Traffic: The total number of visits to your Website.

Traffic Sources: Sources where your website traffic is coming from.

Unique Visitor: The number of individual visitors to a site over the course of a specific time period.

Uniform Resource Locator (URL): The address of your Website (i.e. www.mycompany.com)

Visitor: The person who goes to a Website. The "Visitor" section of Google Analytics offers data and reports concerning the behavior of the visitors that frequent your Website.

Visitor Session: The time a visitor spends on a Website.

Visits: The amount of times your Website is accessed.