12 Most-Tracked Google Analytics Dimensions And Metrics

Dimensions in Google Analytics

A Google Analytics Dimension is an information attribute. By investing one’s time to understand the dimensions, one can learn a lot about the customers, along with the language they speak, the place where they are from, the gadget used to visit the website, and so on.

The Metrics in Google Analytics

Now, let us understand what Google Analytics Metrics is. Google Analytics collates information or data about a website and the traffic that the website generates in real-time.

This data is then displayed as a group of reports – each group with widgets that are fixed to track specific Google Analytics Dimensions and Google Analytics Metrics.

The Difference Between Metrics and Dimensions in Google Analytics

Google Analytics Dimensions are qualitative data that is non-numerical in nature. One can consider them as “categories.” Google Analytics uses these categories to organize the data it collates. Google Analytics Dimensions comprise the following:

• Device Category
• Country
• Medium
• Campaign

For example, if a 35-year-old woman in Spain accesses a website through an Instagram ad from on her smartphone, then the dimension attributes are as follows:

• Gender: Female
• Age: 35-45
• Location: Spain
• Source/Medium: Instagram/paid_social
• Device Category: Cellphone

Google Analytics Metrics are distinct elements of a specific dimension that can be measured as a ratio or also a sum. They are quantitative measurements of the information or the data that is tracked by Google Analytics. Google Analytics Metrics comprise the following:

• Sessions
• Conversion Rate
• Session Duration
• Goal Completion

Thus, metrics help to analyze data; however, they are obsolete without the dimensions against which data can be compared.

Most-Tracked Google Analytics Metrics

Following are the Google Analytics Metrics that are absolutely essential to track:

1. Users

Users are individuals that visit a website. There are two categories of users – new and returning. New users are people who have never visited your site before and returning users are the people who have visited your site before.

Two types of people visit your website – those who have been there before, and those who have not.

In Google Analytics, Users define the number of visitors landing on your website, meaning new plus returning visitors. New users are the ones visiting the site for the first time during that period.

And when someone visits your website n number of times on the same device or browser, they get counted as one user. Google Analytics categorizes these repeat customers as returning users.

The point to keep in mind here is – if a user changes devices/browsers on a return visit to your site, or deletes the cookies, and returns to it subsequently, they are considered as a new user even though they should be counted as returning users.

To find Users, navigate to :

Audience > Overview

You will see a table, where you can have a closer look at Users.

Alex Chenery-Howes, SEO Executive at Yellowball, admits paying the most attention to users, new users, and conversions via organic traffic.

“We find that attracting new users via search engines is the best indication of organic, sustainable growth. As well as this, conversions help us ensure that we aren’t gaining traffic with no strategic value. Otherwise, we would fall victim to ‘vanity metrics‘ – numbers that merely look positive but don’t indicate long-term value.”

Despite not being 100% accurate, the ‘Users’ metric can be beneficial in measuring visitors that initiated at least one session on your website during a specified period of time.

2. Bounce Rate

If a user visits a website and leaves without any interactions on the site, then additional requests are not sent to the analytics server and such interactions are termed as a bounce. Thus, the bounce rate is the total percentage of all sessions that have bounced on a website.

3. Sessions

Sessions are defined as a group of user interactions that occur with a website within a specified time period.

A session is initiated once a user visits a website and is terminated after 30 minutes of the user being inactive, or if the user comes to the website through one campaign, leaves, and then joins through another campaign.

4. Average Session Duration

The average time that a user spends on a single page is termed as average time on page. By observing the average time, one can gauge the user engagement level with the website.

The time that an individual user spends interacting with a website is – session duration.

• “Session Duration” report can be found under

Audience > Behavior > Engagement

Average Session Duration is a metric measuring the average amount of time that users spend on that particular website.

• Analysts can have a look at Sessions and Average Session Duration by navigating to

Audience Report > Overview

• To see an overview of your pages and their average session durations, navigate to

Behavior > Site Content > All Pages

5. Percentage of New Sessions

Percentage of new sessions displays the percentage of the total amount of user sessions received from new users to a website.

This Google Analytics Metric aids in tracking two performance goals, which are the retainment level of the users and progress with attracting new visitors to the website.

6. Sessions By Channel

The channel groupings of Google Analytics helps to classify the traffic so that one can track the performance of specific channels, such as paid, organic, social, direct, e-mail, and so on. The number of sessions that are attributed to each channel grouping is termed as sessions by channel.

7. Pages Per Session

The number of pages that a specific user views during a session are termed as pages per session.

If one observes an increase in the pages per session, this ideally means that the users are quite engaged with the content being displayed on the website as they are navigating through more pages on the website.

8. Goal Completions

The goal completions metric are defined as the how many times a website visitor completes a specific goal on a website.

A fundamental component of any Digital Analytics measurement plan is defining goals, which enables you to track specific user interactions such as form submissions, leads collection, product purchases, and more on your website.

Goals let you measure how efficient your site is in fulfilling your target objectives. Generally, company websites fall into three core categories:

• eCommerce(goal – make users buy something)
• lead generation(goal – make users submit form) 
• content(goal – make users engage with the brand community or sign up to receive content)

Goal Completion measures the number of visitors who have completed a particular goal on your website/mobile app, such as subscribing to a mailing list or signing up for a trial.

To find Goal Completion Metric:

Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages

Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium

Goal Completion is an important part of the purchase funnel as it mainly indicates your conversion rates from the awareness stage to the consideration stage.

It is a leading indicator of how effectively your website resonates with your target audience and so it is used widely in website optimization.

9. Pageviews, Unique Pageviews

In Google Analytics Metrics, pageviews refers to the number of views for each page. Pages that are viewed by the same user more than once are also taken into count. The unique pageviews count the number of times a page is viewed in a particular session.

10. PageViews By Page

PageViews by Page is a metric that displays the total number of pageviews that each page of a website has received within a given timeframe.

Pageviews is the total number of loads/reloads/revisit of the same page within a single user session for a given period of time. So, it can include multiple views from the same user session.

In short, the total number of pages viewed is a pageview. And ‘Unique Pageview’ in Google Analytics represents the total number of sessions when a specific page was viewed at least once.

To have a closer look at Pageviews, navigate to

Audience > Overview

One can also find Pageviews by navigating to

Behavior > Site Content > All Pages

With the pageviews metric, you can have insight into how compelling and popular a specific page is. To create high-traffic content, use a page with high pageviews as a template.

Though some analysts do not think of pageviews as an important metric on its own, they agree that pageviews and unique pageviews are necessary to create a baseline of growth and popularity for the website.

And when combined with other data, it can help you understand more about visitor behavior and your website.

11. Source/Medium and Channels

In Google Analytics Metrics, the source refers to where the traffic to a website is being generated from, for example, a search engine, where a user specifies a URL address and goes to a website or chooses it from a bookmark.

The medium metric is a general category of how the user visits the website, for example, through non-paid traffic from search engines, PPC, and so on.

12. Landing Page Conversion

A landing page is any web page where you send “campaign traffic,” meaning the click-throughs from your Ads and campaigns(PPCs, social media ads, or emails) to initiate a conversation and strike a deal.

To find Landing Page Conversion, navigate to

Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages > GCR and Goal Completion

Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful tool for measuring a landing page’s performance and fine-tune any element if needed.

To make your landing page high converting, you need to present a single and focused call to action, eliminate distractions, clearly convey the value, and reduce friction. Video can also be used to boost user engagement.

An ideal landing page should warm up your potential customers and get them ready to purchase your product or service before sending them through to sign the deal.

It must also capture leads for further communications so that you can market to them when they are further down the sales funnel.

Tracking a landing page conversion rate helps you understand what parts of your landing page needs improvement, whether it is performing well and is worth the time and money to keep using the page.