AdWords and Analytics uses specific terminology, much of which Google has a created, to define statistics generated from AdWords campaigns and traffic to a website. To properly interpret and monitor Google Analytics reports these terms must be understood.Having a Google AdWords account linked to Analytics account provides detailed information about PPC (pay per click) website visitors. Statistics may vary slightly from reports generated in AdWords as the AdWords data may be refined for any invalid clicks – automated clicks made by spam-bots. This data may have already been recorded by Analytics and will not change. AdWords campaign/website performance is tracked by Google Analytics and this data should be analysed to help quantify the success of the campaign. Data is best compared over longer periods of time, such as a month to see how the campaign/website is performing. Ideally, if a companies website has season influences (for which most will) data is best compared over the same period during the year. Visitor trends will vary between industries/locations e.g. someone looking for a locksmith in a specific suburb of Melbourne may have a much shorter stay on a website than a person looking for dining room furniture or a financial advisor .

Basic Google AdWords Terms

Keyword The keywords you choose are the terms or phrases you want to “trigger” your ad to appear. For example, if you deliver fresh flowers, you can use “fresh flower delivery” as a keyword in your AdWords campaign. When a Google user enters “fresh flower delivery” in a Google search, your ad could appear next to the search results.

Campaign & Ad Group AdWords accounts are organized into campaigns and ad groups. You start with one campaign, which has its own daily budget and targeting preferences. As you expand your advertising, you add more campaigns or ad groups, which are sets of related ads, keywords, and placements within a campaign. For example, you might choose to create one campaign for each product or service that you want to advertise.

Click If a customer sees your ad and clicks on it to learn more or to do business with you, it’s recorded in your account as a click. Monitor your clicks to see how many people choose to enter your website from your ad.

Cost-per-click (CPC) With cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, you pay only when someone clicks on your ad. You can have AdWords manage your CPC automatically, or you can choose a maximum CPC bid. Your CPC bid helps determine how often your ad can appear and its ranking on the page.

Impression (Impr.) The number of impressions is the number of times an ad is displayed on Google or the Google Network. Monitor your impressions to see how much exposure your ad is getting.

Click through rate (CTR) Click through rate (CTR) is the number of clicks your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown (impressions). A keyword’s CTR is a strong indicator of its relevance to the user and the overall success of the keyword. The more your keywords and ads relate to each other and to your business, the more likely a user is to click on your ad after searching on your keyword phrase.

Average Position Average position is a statistic displayed in the “Avg. Pos” column in your AdWords account. It refers to the position on a search results page where your ad appears for each of your keywords. “1” is the highest position on the first page of search results. There is no “bottom” position. An average position of “1.7” means your ad usually appears in positions 1 or 2. Average ad positions are not fixed; they may vary depending on various performance factors.

Networks You can choose where on the Internet your ads will appear. Ads can appear on Google’s Search Network, Display Network, or both. The Search Network includes Google and other search sites. Ads can appear beside or above search results for keywords that you choose. The Display Network includes a collection of websites that have partnered with Google (display partners), YouTube, and specific Google properties that display AdWords ads.

Quality Score Quality Score is a measure of how relevant your ad, keyword, or webpage is. Quality Scores help ensure that only the most relevant ads appear to users on Google and the Google Network. As you progress with your account, refer to the Help Center to learn more about Quality Score and the importance of relevancy.

Conversion A conversion occurs when a user completes an action on your site, such as buying something or requesting more information.

Basic Google Analytics Terms

Bounce rate A percentage value that represents the amount of visitors that exited the site from the same page they landed on (1-page visits).

Conversion rate Shortest explanation: Turning average website visitors into valuable visitors, e.g. loyal visitors, leads, customers etc.

Conversion goal The point on your site which, when it is reached, indicates visitors have converted. This could be the thank you page that follows the submission on a registration page.

Conversion Funnel The term ‘funnel’ gives a visual representation of what conversion is about. You start with a large amount of visitors, but a much smaller amount of visitors come out at the bottom of the funnel (visitors reaching your goals). A conversion funnel usually has a number of levels, tagged by the pages that visitors follow on their way to reaching the defined goal. Each level always sees a loss of visitors, therefore after every level the amount of visitors decreases and a funnel shape is logically visible.

CPA Cost per Acquisition. How much did it cost you to attract a newly converted visitor (e.g. new customer)?

Direct Traffic These are web visitors that typed your web address into their Internet browser. Launching a site via a bookmark is also included in this category. Direct traffic visitors can be the result of an offline promotion, word-of-mouth or simply from your business card.

Hits A logfile relic: Misunderstood and rather irrelevant for most web analytics purposes. A hit is an action on a website, meaning the viewing of a page or downloading of a file, and usually both. Imagine a page with five images. One page view would load e.g. 1 htm file and 5 images, which translates into 6 hits. Boasting that your website received a million hits last month is NOT impressive, it’s an empty value in this regard.

Impression The number of times an item is shown/loaded (usually adverts in the form of banners or paid search results, for example).

Key Performance Indicator (KPI) KPI’s are the most important statistics that give you a snapshot overview of how your site is doing. Which KPI’s are important to keep an eye on has to be determined on an individual basis, according to what the site’s main goal is. Commerce, lead generating etc.

Landing page Is used to refer to pages that are the point of entry for visitors, but more commonly used as a term for pages that are a point of entry for visitors but are specifically optimized to maximize conversion rates.

New visits The percentage of web visitors that were new (i.e. have never visited your site before). In other words, how many of your total visitors are new visitors versus how many of your total visitors are repeat visitors.

Organic traffic “Free traffic” in its most basic explanation. Think of natural referrers (through free links) or Google search engine traffic (non-Google Adwords traffic).

Page view The successful loading of a page.

Query string A query string can be a part of a URL and can contain parameters/variables that send instructions to the web server. Query strings often appear in the URL of dynamically generated pages. An example URL with query string (bolded) is: http://www.site.com/page.php?variable=1&secondvariable=2 Referrers are generic websites, search engines, banner ads, weblogs: online sources through which visitors find your site.

ROI Return On Investment is a more general business term indicating (in its most basic explanation) how much benefit is reaped from the resources invested in, for example, a marketing campaign.

RPA Revenue per Acquisition. How much revenue did a newly converted visitor (e.g. new customer) generate?

Traffic Sources How visitors found your website either via direct traffic, referring sites or search engines.

Unique visitor (aka ‘uniques’) Unique Visitors represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period.

Visit Visits: A visit is essentially a session. Visitor Sessions represents the number of times individual users visited your website over the course of a specified time period. This is a sum of first-time, returning, and unknown sessions.