A web analytics glossary for actual decisions.

A controlled experiment that randomly assigns eligible visitors to two variants and compares a predefined outcome.

A visit whose referrer identifies an AI assistant or answer engine. It measures a click, not unseen citations or model training.

A rule for assigning conversion credit to one or more observed marketing interactions.

Requests generated by automated software, including search crawlers, monitors, AI agents, scrapers, and malicious automation.

A measure of sessions with limited engagement. The exact calculation differs across analytics products, so comparisons require aligned definitions.

A named marketing initiative used to group traffic and outcomes across channels, creatives, markets, or time periods.

The preferred address for a page when substantially similar URLs exist. Search engines treat it as a strong hint rather than an absolute command.

A mechanism that changes tag behavior based on a visitor’s consent state. It does not create consent or determine which rules apply.

A predefined action that represents progress toward a business outcome, such as a qualified enquiry, purchase, or completed signup.

Conversions divided by an eligible population, usually users or sessions, expressed as a percentage.

A range produced by a statistical procedure that communicates sampling uncertainty around an estimate.

Analytics designed to operate without persistent browser cookies. It may still process IP addresses, user agents, URLs, or other regulated data.

Visits whose true source is unavailable and is therefore grouped into direct or unknown traffic.

A structured interface through which a site exposes business events and attributes to tags or analytics code.

The practice of collecting, retaining, and exposing only the data needed for a stated purpose.

Traffic without a usable referrer or campaign source. It includes typed URLs and bookmarks, but also many visits whose source was lost.

A GA4 session meeting a time, page-view, or key-event threshold. It is a product-specific definition, not a universal standard.

A timestamped record of an interaction or state change, usually accompanied by structured parameters.

A measurement setup where the website owner controls the collection context and relationship with the visitor. It does not automatically mean self-hosted or consent-free.

A cookie set in the context of the site a visitor is using, whether written by site code or a third-party service acting through that domain.

A configured condition that marks a meaningful outcome. Some tools now call goals conversions or key events.

An aggregate visualization of interactions such as clicks, taps, or scroll depth across many visits.

GA4 terminology for an event marked as important to business measurement; previously called a conversion in the analytics interface.

The smallest difference an experiment is designed to detect with its chosen significance level and statistical power.

A recorded view of a page or route. Single-page applications require explicit route-change measurement.

A key-value pair after the question mark in a URL, used for state, filtering, attribution, and other purposes.

The prior page address supplied with a request, subject to browser policy, redirects, applications, and privacy controls.

The documented duration for which analytics data remains available before deletion or aggregation.

An intermediary on the site’s domain that receives a request and forwards it to another service, often changing the visible collection path.

Measurement in which a server receives, enriches, filters, or forwards events rather than relying only on direct browser-to-vendor requests.

A product-defined grouping of interactions within a time window. Session boundaries differ by tool and configuration.

A reconstruction of an individual visit from recorded page state and interactions. It carries different privacy and payload tradeoffs than aggregate heatmaps.

The probability that a test will detect an effect at least as large as the design target when that effect is real.

A system for configuring and delivering measurement or marketing code through a managed container.

An estimated distinct visitor within a reporting window, based on a cookie, account identifier, or probabilistic method.

A conventional campaign query parameter such as utm_source, utm_medium, or utm_campaign appended to a destination URL.

An automated agent whose operator can be authenticated using published IP ranges, reverse DNS, or another documented mechanism.

A chronological record of one visitor or session’s measured actions, usually presented as paths, events, referrers, and environment details.