Glossary

Web analytics include professional web statistics that can provide a lot more than reporting standard data, for example information for a deeper and customized analysis. With web traffic statistics we can follow the trends and changes in the number of visitors, how many of them arrived by clicking on a link placed in a different site and how many of them got to the website using search engines. We can also find out which keywords resulted in a visit from a search engine (usually from Google).

To measure our website traffic it is recommended to use applications that provide accurate and detailed results. The most commonly used external measuring tools are Google Analytics, Gemius, Webaudit and Alexa. To this day only WebAudit and Gemius are audited applications that provide widely accepted traffic data. While Google Analytics is a professional application it is not considered a certified traffic measurement tool. In its current form it is a private application designed for the internal use of websites. Audited data is in many cases available for the public. (The decision to make traffic data public belongs to the operator of the website.)

The visit refers to the number of separate visits by the users, regardless of how many pages they have viewed. To measure visits it is crucial to identify what we count as a new visit or enter to our site. The general rule is that if a visitor leaves the page and returns only more than 30 minutes later the visit is considered a new one. This means that even if a user looks through several parts of our site, clicks on internal links and spends hours on our page but never actually leaves it their visit is considered only as one.

A relatively easy to interpret data that measures web traffic. It shows how many users viewed our page. In practice the number of visitors that can be differentiated (for example by their IP addresses). If someone is regularly visiting the same website from the same computer this user is going to be considered a unique visitor.

When we view a website in our browser we actually download the site. If we view a certain page for twenty times than the number of page views is going to be twenty. The page view refers to the number of full pages downloaded, namely how many times all users viewed our page.

PI is a short term for page impression, this means the number of page downloads. We can differentiate between full page impressions and incomplete page impressions. The first one refers to the number of pages completely downloaded, the second one refers to the number of all page downloads regardless of the fact that the download was complete or it was interrupted before completion.

The bounce rate shows the rate of users who “bounced” from the site, meaning that the entering and leaving page was the same, so they haven’t viewed another page on the website. This also means that if a visitor is reading for ten minutes on a page and rather than clicking on a link placed on the site closes the window or clicks to go back this visitor is considered “bounced”.

• Traffic from Search Engines: The section of website visitors who got to our site using Google or other search engines.
• Direct traffic: The visitors of the website that got to the site using bookmarks or typing the URL in their browsers.
• Referring sites: The visitors of the website that got to the site by clicking links on different websites.

The cost of a click – in case of online advertisements this term refers to how much it costs when someone clicks on our ad.

The cost of 1000 impressions. In case of online advertisemts it refers to the cost that is due when our ad achieves 1000 impressions.

It is an advertising method where payments are made after clicks and advertisers can bid on the amount paid per clicks. The goal of bidding is that in a certain category the advertiser offering the highest price could get a better position compared to its competitors.

The click through rate shows how many visitors clicked on an advertising link compared to the number of ad impressions. The CTR is the number of clicks per the number of impressions.