Digital Marketing Glossary – Explaining the Terms You See In Our Reports
A Glossary of Digital Marketing Terms
Plain-English definitions of the metrics and jargon you’ll come across in these reports
Digital marketing comes with more than its fair share of acronyms and shorthand. This glossary is a quick reference for the terms you’re most likely to come across in your reports – the metrics, channels and bits of platform jargon, written in plain English, with a sentence or two on what each one actually means. If you find anything else you don’t understand, always feel free to ask.
A
Ad Group
A bundle of closely related keywords and ads inside a paid campaign. Grouping them tightly (for example, all the terms relating to a specific category on your website) usually means more relevant ads and lower costs.
AI Overview
Google’s AI-generated answer that appears at the top of many search results, summarised from a handful of sites. Good for brand visibility, but it often replaces the click — see also Zero-Click Search.
AI Tools (channel)
A newer GA4 channel that captures visits coming from AI chat tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Volumes are tiny for most sites at the moment, but they are growing.
Alt Text
A short written description of an image, read aloud by screen readers and picked up by Google. Good alt text helps accessibility and gives a small SEO benefit too.
Attribution
How the platform giving your results decides which channel gets credit for a sale. Some rely on what the last click came from, some are data driven so they are modelled over time and others use different models. These can change the numbers quite a lot, so it is always worth knowing which one is in use.
Average Engagement Time
How long a typical visitor was actively engaged with the page — with the tab in focus, scrolling, clicking — rather than just sitting open in a background tab. A better quality signal than the old “time on page”.
Average Order Value (AOV)
The average amount spent per order, found by dividing total revenue by the number of transactions. A useful steer on whether price changes, bundling or upselling are working. In GA4 this is usually shown as Average Purchase Revenue.
Average Position
Roughly where your site appears in Google’s search results for a given keyword. Lower numbers are better (1 is the top result), but in practice anything outside the top 10 earns very few clicks.
Average Purchase Revenue
GA4’s phrase for the typical value of a purchase across the period. The same idea as Average Order Value.
B
Backlink
A link from another website to yours. Quality matters far more than quantity — a single link from a respected site (e.g. The Guardian) can be worth more than fifty from somewhere spammy.
Bid
The maximum you are willing to pay for a click in a paid ad auction. You rarely pay your full bid; the actual cost is usually a bit below it.
Bounce Rate
The old measure of visitors who arrived and left without doing anything else. GA4 has largely replaced this with Engagement Rate, which tells a fuller story.
Brand vs Non-Brand
A split of paid search performance. “Brand” campaigns target people already searching for your name or terms close to it; “Non-Brand” reaches new audiences searching for what you sell. Brand is usually cheap and efficient; non-brand is where most new customers come from.
Branded Keywords
Search terms that include your business name (for example, your company name on its own, or paired with words like “reviews” or your product types). High intent and usually high converting.
C
Call-to-Action (CTA)
The button or line of copy nudging someone to do the next thing — “Order Now”, “Get in Touch”, “Shop Now”. Small wording changes here can shift conversion noticeably.
Campaign
A container in Google or Microsoft Ads that holds related ad groups, keywords and ads, usually with its own budget and goal.
Channel
The route someone took to get to your site — Organic Search, Direct, Paid Ads, Email and so on. Channels group lots of underlying sources into something easier to read.
Click
A single press on your ad, link or search result. The most basic measure of interest.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The percentage of people who clicked after seeing your ad, link or search result. A high CTR usually means your wording and targeting are well matched to the audience.
Consent Management Platform (CMP)
The system behind your cookie banner that records who has and has not agreed to tracking e.g. Cookiebot. Getting the settings right makes a big difference to how much real data lands in your analytics.
Conversion
Any meaningful action you have decided to measure — usually a sale, but it can also be a phone call, a form submission or a sign-up.
Conversion Rate (CR)
The percentage of visitors (or clicks, or sessions) that ended in a conversion. The headline measure of how well a channel is paying off.
Conversion Value
The revenue (or value you have assigned) attached to each conversion. Lets you compare channels by money rather than just count.
Cookie
A small file a website drops on a visitor’s browser to remember things like login details or whether they have accepted tracking. Without consented cookies, much of your analytics goes unmeasured.
Core Web Vitals
Google’s measure of how quickly and smoothly your pages load. They feed into rankings, so a slow site is usually underperforming.
Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
What you actually pay each time someone clicks your ad. Lower is generally better, but only if the click still converts.
Crawl
The process of a search engine robot visiting your site and reading the pages. If a page cannot be crawled, it cannot rank.
D
Direct (channel)
Visits where there is no obvious referrer. This could be because someone typing your address in, using a bookmark, or coming via an app such as Messenger where the source was lost. Direct often picks up “untrackable” traffic too so it does increase as more Cookies are blocked or people use more private browser settings. It can also be increased by lack of cross-domain tracking from payment or returns gateways.
Display Network
The huge set of third-party websites and apps where Google can show banner-style ads, separate from search results.
Domain Authority / Domain Trust (DA / DT)
A third-party score (from tools like Moz or SE Ranking) that estimates how strong a site looks to search engines, based mostly on backlinks. Useful for comparison rather than as a ranking factor in itself.
E
Ecommerce Transactions
The number of actual completed orders tracked in GA4 during the period.
Email (channel)
Sessions and revenue that came from someone clicking through from a marketing email. Tagged links (UTMs) are what make this trackable.
Engaged Session
A GA4 session where the visitor stayed at least 10 seconds, viewed more than one page, or triggered a conversion. The opposite of a bounce.
Engagement Rate
The percentage of sessions that counted as “engaged”. GA4’s main quality signal — higher is better, and around 60% is healthy.
Exact Match
A paid search match type where your ad only shows for searches very close to the keyword. The tightest control, but the smallest reach.
G
Geo-Targeting
Restricting where ads or content are shown based on the visitor’s location. Useful for keeping budget focused on places you actually deliver to.
Google Ads
Google’s pay-per-click platform, covering Search, Shopping, Performance Max, YouTube and Display.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Google’s current analytics platform, which replaced Universal Analytics in 2023. It is event-based rather than session-based, so the numbers do not always tie back to the old version cleanly.
Google Merchant Centre
Where your product catalogue lives for Google Shopping and Performance Max. It needs the right product data, images and stock status for ads to keep running.
Google Search Console (GSC)
A free Google tool showing how your site performs in organic search — impressions, clicks, average position, and which queries you ranked for.
H
H1 Tag
The main heading on a webpage, treated by Google as a strong hint about what the page is about. There should only be one H1 per page, ideally including the main keyword.
I
Impression
A single time your ad, link or page was shown to someone — whether they noticed it or not. A useful “reach” measure, but a click is worth a great deal more.
Indexing
Once Google has crawled a page and added it to its searchable list, it is “indexed”. A page that is not indexed cannot appear in search results.
K
Key Event
GA4’s name for what used to be called a “conversion” — any tracked action you have decided matters, like a completed order or a form submission.
Keyword
A word or phrase someone types into a search engine. Keywords are what matters in both SEO and paid search.
L
Landing Page
The page someone arrives on after clicking an ad or search result. The best ones answer the exact intent of the click and keep the visitor moving towards the action you want.
Long-Tail Keywords
Longer, more specific searches (such as “red short sleeved linen blouse”) rather than short broad ones. Lower volume, but usually much higher intent.
M
Match Type
The setting that controls how closely a search has to match your keyword for your ad to show. The common types are Exact, Phrase and Broad.
Meta Description
The short bit of text that helps Google decide what to put as the snippet under your link in Google’s results. It does not directly affect rankings, but a good one can lift click-through rate.
Microsoft Ads
Microsoft’s paid search platform (formerly Bing Ads). It reaches mostly Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo users — small audience, but often cheap and surprisingly profitable especially with older audiences.
Month-on-Month (MoM)
A comparison of the current period against the previous month. We usually set this to be the same number of days, so for example in a February with 28 days we’d compare against 28 days of January.
N
Negative Keywords
Words you tell Google or Microsoft you do not want your ads to show for (such as “free” or “jobs”). One of the cheapest ways to stop wasted spend.
New Users
Visitors who had not been to the site in the look-back window — in Google Analytics 4 this is normally 2 years. It gives a rough measure of new audience reach. Because this metric relies on cookies, someone using an incognito window, someone who frequently clears their cookies, or a returning visitor on a new device will be counted as a new user.
O
Organic Search
Visits from unpaid search results, mostly Google plus smaller engines like Bing, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia.
Organic Social
Visits from social media posts you did not pay to promote – your own Facebook and Instagram posts, for example.
Organic Shopping
Free product listings in Google Shopping, separate from paid Shopping Ads.
P
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Any advertising where you pay each time someone clicks. Google Ads and Microsoft Ads are the main examples.
Performance Max (PMax)
A Google Ads campaign type that combines Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube and Gmail into one automated package. We set the goals and Google decides where to spend.
Phrase Match
A paid search match type that triggers when someone’s search includes the meaning of your keyword. It sits between Exact (tightest) and Broad (loosest).
Pixel / Tracking Tag
A small piece of code on your site that lets a platform (e.g. Meta, Google, Microsoft) measure what visitors do. Without it, you cannot track conversions or retarget.
Q
Quality Score
Google Ads’ 1–10 rating for how relevant your keyword, ad and landing page are to a searcher. Higher scores mean lower costs and better ad position.
Query
The actual words a visitor typed into a search engine. Your keywords are what you bid on; queries are what people really searched for — the two are rarely identical.
R
Referral
Visits that came from clicks on links on other websites, excluding search and social.
Remarketing
Showing ads to people who have already visited your site but did not buy. A gentle nudge rather than a cold approach. Also called retargeting.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
How much revenue you got back for every £1 spent on ads. The clearest single measure of whether ads are paying for themselves — a ROAS of £54 means £54 of sales for every £1 of spend.
Return on Investment (ROI)
A broader profitability measure, usually after the cost of goods, postage and overhead. ROAS just looks at revenue against ad spend; ROI looks at actual profit.
S
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
The ongoing work of making your site more visible in unpaid search results — covering content, structure, technical health and links.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
What Google and other search engines show you after a search: a mix of ads, organic results, shopping listings, AI overviews and various boxes.
Search Visibility
A composite score (from tools like SE Ranking) showing what share of all possible search traffic for your tracked keywords you are currently capturing.
Search Volume
The estimated number of times a keyword is searched each month. Helps decide whether a term is worth targeting.
Session
A single visit. It starts when someone arrives and ends after 30 minutes of inactivity, or when the day ticks over.
Session Conversion Rate
The percentage of sessions that ended in a key event (usually a purchase).
Sitelink
Extra links shown under a paid ad, taking users straight to specific pages (for example, “Contact Us” or “Pricing”). They take up more space in the results and lift click-through rate.
Source / Medium
A pair that tells you where the traffic came from and how. Source is the platform (google, bing, mailchimp); medium is the type (cpc, organic, email).
T
Top 5 / Top 10 / Top 30
In ranking reports, the number of your tracked keywords that sit in the first 5, 10 or 30 Google results. Top 5 is where the meaningful traffic happens; positions 30+ rarely earn a click.
Total Revenue
The full ecommerce revenue tracked for the period.
Traffic Forecast
A tool’s estimate of how many monthly visitors your current rankings ought to be bringing in. A rough guide rather than a precise figure.
Transaction
A single completed order. Same idea as a “key event” of type purchase.
U
Unassigned (channel)
Traffic GA4 could not fit into any defined channel — usually a tagging issue or a missing referrer. Worth keeping an eye on if it gets large.
URL
The web address of a page (such as yourbusiness.co.uk/about-us). Clean, readable URLs help SEO.
Users
Distinct visitors in the period — loosely. GA4 counts them by browser and device, so one person on a phone and a laptop may show up as two.
X
XML Sitemap
A behind-the-scenes file listing every page of your site, used by Google to find and crawl them efficiently. Mostly a “set and forget” thing once it is right.
Y
Year-on-Year (YoY)
A comparison of the current period against the same period last year (for example, April 2026 against April 2025). The fairest way to read seasonal businesses, where month-on-month moves can be misleading.
Z
Zero-Click Search
A Google search where the answer appears directly on the results page — in an AI Overview, featured snippet or knowledge panel — and no one clicks through. A rising share of all searches, and a real concern for organic traffic.
