Periodic Table of Google Analytics
Welcome to the latest edition of the Periodic Table of Google Analytics. Each of the elements is designed to educate you on all of the wonderful things you can do in Google Analytics.
In 2013, I began working on a project to categorize and visually display all of the powerful options available within Google Analytics. It all started in the classroom where my students would be excited about how awesome this analytics tool is, but overwhelmed with the amount of information. I wanted to create something to help them better simplify, organize and visualize the many components of Google Analytics, and how they related to each other.
After dreaming up several display methods, I decided on an idea that has worked well in the past for other areas: the Periodic Table of Google Analytics.
| Category | Element | Symbol | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audience | Audience Reports | |
“The who” – learn important more about your visitors |
| Audience | Session | |
Activity that happens within a 30 minute session window on your site |
| Audience | Users | |
The number of uniquely cookied visitors over a given time frame |
| Audience | Session Duration | |
How much time has been spent on your site for a session |
| Audience | Active Users | |
How many visitors were active on your site over a given period of time |
| Audience | Cohort Analysis |  |
Use relative dates to understand how groups of users perform |
| Audience | Demographics | |
Get to know your visitors better |
| Audience | Age | |
How does visitor age affect performance? |
| Audience | Gender | |
Are you reaching your target audience? |
| Audience | Interests | |
What are your visitors interested in? Does it match your focus? |
| Audience | Affinity Categories | |
Reach visitors at the top of the funnel, match to AdWords |
| Audience | In-Market Segments | |
Reach visitors actively searching for products and services online |
| Audience | Interest Categories | |
What else can Google tell you about your visitors? |
| Audience | Geo | |
Where in the world? |
| Audience | Language | |
What language is the browser set to? |
| Audience | Location | |
Which cities, states and countries send visitors to your site? |
| Audience | New Users | |
Have we seen this users cookie before? |
| Audience | Frequency & Reach | |
Comparing session count vs. sessions |
| Audience | Engagement | |
Are your visitors 10 second wonders or long haulers? |
| Audience | Technology | |
A web developers best friend |
| Audience | Browser & OS | |
Beware Internet Explorer users |
| Audience | Network | |
Discover ISPs and double check your hostnames for SPAM |
| Audience | Mobile Reports | |
Is 2015 the year mobile surpasses desktop for your site? |
| Audience | Devices | |
Apple vs. Google – who wins? |
| Audience | Cross Device | |
User-ID enabled report exclusive to universal analytics |
| Audience | Device Paths | |
People don't use one computer to buy anymore |
| Audience | Acquisition Device | |
How did they find you the first time? |
| Audience | Custom | |
How we used to define our audiences before Universal Analytics |
| Audience | Custom Variables | |
In an ancient world (2013), we used these before custom dimensions |
| Audience | User Defined | |
Honestly, Google doesn't even seem to know what this means |
| Audience | Benchmarking | |
How is your site performing vs. others in your industry? |
| Audience | Channels | |
Are you making the right investments in visitor acquisition? |
| Audience | Locations | |
Get a little closer with your competitor estimates |
| Audience | Benchmarking Devices | |
Are you a mobile leader or laggard? |
| Audience | Users Flow | |
Do users follow the path of least resistance |
| Acquisition | Acquisition Reports | |
“The where?” – learn how people are finding your site |
| Acquisition | Channels | |
An overview the channels driving website visitors, with defaults |
| Acquisition | Source/Medium | |
Who sent you traffic (source) and how did they send it (medium)? |
| Acquisition | Direct Visits | |
Frankly, we don't know where you came from |
| Acquisition | Referrals | |
Visitors who came to your site from another website |
| Acquisition | Organic Search | |
Traffic driven to your website by natural search engine listings |
| Acquisition | Paid Search | |
Industry calls it PPC, Google Analytcampaignics calls it cpc. Deal with it. |
| Acquisition | Email Traffic | |
Traffic driven to your website through email marketing campaigns |
| Acquisition | AdWords Clicks | |
Report on actual costs to actual revenue for actual ROAS analysis! |
| Acquisition | Cost Source | |
Data imported into your account from Google AdWords |
| Acquisition | UTM Variables | |
Clean up your reports with campaign tagging |
| Acquisition | All Referrals | |
View the full referral path from external websites |
| Acquisition | AdWords | |
Are your paid search efforts returning a positive ROAS? |
| Acquisition | AdWords Campaigns | |
View website performance for AdWords campaigns |
| Acquisition | Treemaps | |
Give your reports a sense of scale |
| Acquisition | Bid Adjustments | |
In depth understanding of mobile bid adjustments |
| Acquisition | Keywords | |
Your AdWords keywords by match type |
| Acquisition | Search Queries | |
The actual query that drove your AdWords visitors |
| Acquisition | Hours of Day | |
Who shops at 3am on a Tuesday anyway? |
| Acquisition | Destination URLs | |
How do your landing pages affect conversion rates? |
| Acquisition | Display Targeting | |
Gain a complete understanding of how you perform on the GDN |
| Acquisition | Video Campaigns | |
Performance of your cat video campaigns |
| Acquisition | Shopping Campaigns | |
Using Google Shopping? Understand your effectiveness here! |
| Acquisition | SEO Reports | |
Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) reports |
| Acquisition | Queries | |
The top 1,000 daily queries for the past 90 days. Very inaccurate |
| Acquisition | Landing Pages | |
The top 1,000 pages receiving search traffic. Accurate for small sites. |
| Acquisition | Geographical Summary | |
Where in the world are people finding you? Web or image search? |
| Acquisition | Social Reports | |
Surface level understanding of social media traffic to your site |
| Acquisition | Netword Referrals | |
Which social networks are driving traffic to your site? |
| Acquisition | Data Hub Activity | |
A once promising roundup of activity on second tier social networks |
| Acquisition | Landing Pages | |
Which pages are hot with social media? |
| Acquisition | Trackbacks | |
Find out which blogs are linking to your content and driving visitors |
| Acquisition | Conversions | |
Are social visitors taking favorable actions? |
| Acquisition | Social Plugins | |
Are those share buttons on your site actually working? |
| Acquisition | Users Flow | |
Do social visitors follow the same path as other visitors? |
| Acquisition | Campaigns | |
Traffic that you drive to your site with proper tagging |
| Acquisition | Paid Keywords | |
Similar to AdWords report, but includes other search engines too |
| Acquisition | Organic Keywords | |
Where your useless (not provided) keyword reports went to die |
| Acquisition | (Not Provided) | |
Still the Bane of SEO Existence |
| Acquisition | Cost Analysis | |
Import your cost data, analyze |
| Behavior | Behavior Reports | |
“The what” – what did visitors do on your site? |
| Behavior | Behavior Flow | |
All roads lead to Rome, but where do your visitors go? |
| Behavior | Site Content | |
Content is queen of the jungle |
| Behavior | Page Value | |
The value of a page of content relative to overall conversion value |
| Behavior | Bounce Rate | |
Who came, puked and left your site? |
| Behavior | Content Drilldown | |
View content grouped by URL patterns |
| Behavior | Landing Pages | |
What is the big draw of your website? |
| Behavior | Exit Pages | |
Are certain pages costing you money? |
| Behavior | Site Speed | |
Is your site more like a Tortoise or Usain Bolt? |
| Behavior | Page Timings | |
For a small subset of pages, how fast did they load? |
| Behavior | Speed Suggestions | |
Tips to optimize site speed, broken down by page |
| Behavior | User Timings | |
Customize categories for your user timings |
| Behavior | Site Search | |
Your search box is a window into your users deepest needs |
| Behavior | Usage | |
What percentage of users are using your search engine? |
| Behavior | Search Terms | |
What do people need help finding? |
| Behavior | Pages | |
Where do users initiate site search? |
| Behavior | Events | |
Beyond a pageview, understand what happens within your pages |
| Behavior | Top Events | |
List frequent event categories, actions and labels for your site |
| Behavior | Pages | |
Which pages have the most events? |
| Behavior | Events Flow | |
What happens before and after your on page events? |
| Behavior | AdSense Reports | |
How much money did your site make and how did you make it? |
| Behavior | AdSense Pages | |
Which pages are bringing in the cash? |
| Behavior | AdSense Referrers | |
Who drove the traffic that made you money? |
| Behavior | Experiments | |
An easy way to split test your pages, complete with statistical |
| Behavior | In-Page Analytics | |
Does enhanced link attribution even work? |
| Conversions | Conversions | |
“The How Much” – What is the purpose of your website? |
| Conversions | Goals | |
Train Google to recognize your key online business objectives |
| Conversions | Goal URLs | |
Which pages on your site are generating goals? |
| Conversions | Reverse Goal Path | |
We know they converted, now let's trace their journey backwards |
| Conversions | Funnel Visualization | |
Ecommerce site? Set up your funnel and thank me later |
| Conversions | Goal Flow | |
This is now the 5th flow chart available in Google Analytics |
| Conversions | Ecommerce | |
Important reports if you are selling products on your website |
| Conversions | Enhanced Ecommerce | |
Improved reporting suite for ecommerce websites |
| Conversions | Product Performance | |
Which products are selling with the most frequency? |
| Conversions | Sales Performance | |
Sort daily sales figures by a number of secondary dimensions |
| Conversions | Transactions | |
Review details of each order, by unique order idea |
| Conversions | Revenue | |
Money money money from ecommerce transactions |
| Conversions | Time to Purchase | |
How many days from the first visit did it take to purchase? |
| Conversions | Multi Channel Funnels | |
Conversion is a team effort and your traffic sources are the players |
| Conversions | Assisted Conversions | |
Which channel gets the glory, and which ones deserve an assist? |
| Conversions | Top Conversion Path | |
The path to purchase is not always simple, understand the journey |
| Conversions | Time Lag | |
How many days from the first visit did it take to convert? |
| Conversions | Path Length | |
How many times do people visit before a purchase? |
| Conversions | Attribution Modeling | |
Give credit where credit is due, we call this the $150k tool |
| Settings | Account | |
All that is Google Analytics is contained in an account |
| Settings | Account Settings | |
Basic settings for your entire account, includes data sharing |
| Settings | User Management | |
Only certain power users can add users/change permissions |
| Settings | All Filters | |
A list of all of the filters in your account |
| Settings | Change History | |
Who did that? When did they do it? |
| Settings | Web Property | |
Each unique domain name/discrete property in your account |
| Settings | Property Settings | |
Settings that are tied to your unique web property |
| Settings | User Management | |
Manage user permissions for a certain property |
| Settings | Tracking Info | |
Cloud based customization of your Universal Analytics property |
| Settings | Tracking Code | |
Find most up to date version of your analytics.js tracking code |
| Settings | User-ID | |
Track users across devices by setting a common User ID |
| Settings | Session Settings | |
30 minutes not enough? Adjust your default session timeout here |
| Settings | Organic Search Sources | |
Add new search engines to the default list of organic traffic sources |
| Settings | Referral Exclusion | |
Stop tracking your subdomains and shopping carts as referrals |
| Settings | Search Term Exclusion | |
If you ever need to set search terms to exclude as organic traffic |
| Settings | Product Linking | |
Integrate various Google products with Google Analytics |
| Settings | AdWords Linking | |
Seamlessly link your AdWords data to Google Analytics reports |
| Settings | AdSense Linking | |
Publishers can unlock deeper AdSense reporting and improve results |
| Settings | All Products | |
Integrating Search Console, Doubleclick and BigQuery happens here |
| Settings | Remarketing | |
Looking to re-engage users once they leave? Do it in Google Analytics! |
| Settings | Custom Definitions | |
This is where you can define custom dimensions and metrics |
| Settings | Custom Dimensions | |
Discover a new way of looking at your visitors (think columns of data) |
| Settings | Custom Metrics | |
Find new ways to quantify the value visitors bring to your business |
| Settings | Data Import | |
Import your offline data into Google Analytics |
| Settings | Social Settings | |
View social media activity for your YouTube channel |
| Settings | Views | |
Each web property can have multiple views, keep one unfiltered |
| Settings | View Settings | |
Settings for that specific view of the data, like site search and ecommerce |
| Settings | Goals | |
Configure Google to recognize your key business goals |
| Settings | Content Grouping | |
Group content together by common attributes |
| Settings | Filters | |
Modify and clean your data before it enters your view |
| Settings | Ecommerce Settings | |
Configure settings for traditional and enhanced ecommerce |
| Settings | Personal Assets | |
The assets you have created within each view |
| Settings | Segments | |
Keep track of all of the segments you have created within a view |
| Settings | Custom Attribution | |
Define or import attribution models for specific business needs |
| Settings | Custom Channel | |
Customize channel groupings to match your strategy |
| Settings | Group | |
Create channel groupings that only you can see |
| Settings | Private Channel Group | |
Google will email or text you whenever certain criteria is met |
| Settings | Scheduled Emails | |
Automatically schedule email reports to yourself or customers |
| Settings | Share Assets | |
Share your creations with other GA users |
| Settings | Calculated Metrics | |
Find new ways to quantify the value visitors bring to your business |
| Interface | Dashboards | |
Customize first thing you see when you log in |
| Interface | Automated Intelligence | |
While you were out… this happened |
| Interface | Annotations | |
Make note of traffic spikes/drops and pay it forward to others |
| Interface | Shortcuts | |
Get to that report faster so you can spend more time analyzing |
| Interface | Real-Time | |
Who is visiting your site right now? |
| Interface | Date Range | |
The period of time your reports are representing |
| Interface | Custom Reports | |
The world is your oyster |
| Product | GA Premium | |
Premium version of Google Analytics for high traffic sites |
| Product | Universal Analytics | |
Newest version of Google Analytics tracking code |
| Product | Classic Analytics | |
A funny name given to a product that is barely 3 years old |
| Product | Urchin Analytics | |
Google Analytics before there was Google Analytics |
| Product | Cookies | |
The method of identifying unique visitors by Google Analytics |
| Product | analytics.js | |
The most current version of the Google Analytics code |
| Product | ga.js | |
Legacy Google Analytics code replaced by analytics.js |
| Product | GAIQ | |
Certification exam for individuals in Google Analytics |
| Product | GACP | |
Google Analytics Certified Partners, the best in the business |
| Product | Mobile App Tracking | |
Special SDK for tracking Android and iOS apps |
| Data | Advanced Segments | |
Easily view how specific visitor segments perform on your site |
| Data | Analytics API | |
Programmatically access Google Analytics, create greatness |
| Data | Async Tracking Code | |
JavaScript code that tracks visitors without slowing you down |
| Data | ELA | |
Enhanced Link Attribution, clean up your In-Page Analytics |
| Data | Pii | |
You can't store Personally Identifiable Information in Google Analytics |
| Data | Integrations | |
Integrate Google Analytics with phone calls, CRM systems and more |
| Data | Measurement Protocol | |
Make Google Analytics talk with your CRM and other systems |
| Data | Client ID | |
A unique identifier for each computer assigned by GA |
| Data | Sampled Data | |
A subset of data from your website traffic used to generate reports |
| Data | Gif Hit | |
Visitor data transmits to Google Analytics via utm.gif image request |
| Data | Data Sharing | |
Share your data between Google products |
| Data | Privacy | |
Something that Google takes very seriously worldwide |
| Data | Google Tag Manager | |
A solution to many of your JavaScript woes |
If you want more detailed explanations of each element on this Periodic Table, I'm creating an entire video series on YouTube. You can head over to my YouTube Channel and check that out. I think you might find it helpful, no matter your skill level.
This will be an ever changing and improving document, so if you find anything that is missing or you disagree with something, please contact us.
