Topic
Analytics basics
What the numbers mean, where they come from, and which ones to trust.
Glossary terms
- Bounce rateBounce rate is the share of visits in which a person views one page and leaves without doing anything else on it. A high rate is not bad in itself. It depends on what the page is for: a post that answers a question completely can bounce and still do its job.
- ReferrerA referrer is the address of the page a visitor was on just before they arrived at yours. The browser sends it with the request, and analytics uses it to name the source of a visit: a search engine, a social site, another website. When it is missing, the visit is usually called Direct.
- SessionA session is one visit to your site: the run of pageviews and actions by one visitor, from arrival until they stop for long enough that the next click counts as a new visit. Most tools end a session after 30 minutes of inactivity. Sessions are the unit behind bounce rate, entry pages and sources.
- Unique visitorA unique visitor is a person, or more exactly a browser, counted once in a period no matter how many times they come back. Analytics cannot see people, so it recognises a browser by a stored identifier or a hash. The count is an estimate of people, and a good one if you read it consistently.
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