Conscious Solutions' Guide to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Jargon Busting.
| Term | Definition |
| Active Users | The total number of active users. You may see 'Active users' referred to as just 'users'. This metric is an approximation. |
| New Users | The number of users who interacted with your site or launched your app for the first time. This metric is an approximation. |
| Total Users | The total number of unique users who have logged an event. This metric is an approximation. |
| Event Count | The number of times users triggered an event. |
| Key Events | The number of times your users triggered a key event. |
| Engagement Rate | The percentage of engaged sessions (Engaged sessions/Sessions). This metric is an approximation. |
| Bounce Rate | The percentage of sessions that were not engaged sessions. |
| Sessions | When a user visits your website, it is called a session. If at least 30 minutes have passed, either by being stationary on the website or leaving the website, a new session would be created. |
| Page Views | When a user visits a webpage, each page they click on will generate a page view unless they have already viewed that page during the session. |
| Views per Session | The number of app screens or web pages your users viewed per session. Repeated views of a single page or screen are counted. Views per session = (screen_view + page_view events) / sessions. |
| Average Session Duration | The average time a session lasts for. |
| Browser & OS | This shows you which browsers and operating systems are being used by users. It also shows the screen resolution in which the website is being viewed and the network being used by the user. |
| Mobile Overview | This shows you what percentage of desktops, mobiles and tablets are being used when users visit your website. |
| Devices | This gives you a breakdown of the types of devices being used when users visit your website. |
| Channel | A source/medium where a user finds your website e.g. organic search, paid search, direct, referral or social. |
| Organic Search | Anything searched through a search engine such as Google and Bing. |
| Paid Search | Any paid ads on search engines. This only works on Google Analytics if you have Google AdWords set up with your account. |
| Referral | Traffic from a link that isn't on a search engine e.g. a directory. |
| Direct | When a user visits your website directly from a URL. |
| Source/Medium | This is what brings traffic to your website. |
| Acquisition Overview | The acquisition overview shows where your users are coming from, including new users and returning users. |
| Traffic Acquisition | The Traffic acquisition report shows where your users are coming from across all of their visits. By default, this report data is session-scoped, which primarily focuses on session attributes. |
| Engagment Overview | The Engagement overview report shows how users engage with your website or app and lists their most frequent interactions. |
| Pages and Screens | The Pages and screens report shows how users interact with each of your web pages or app screens. |
| Landing Pages | The Landing page report shows the first page a visitor lands on when they visit your website and how many visitors land on each page. |