Are you seriously asking what is a “Metric” in Google Analytics? Have you even bothered to read our article on product management and user metrics?
Good grief Charlie Brown!!!!
Fine…I’ll humor you. Every report in Google Analytics (and every other single analytics tool) is made up of metrics and dimensions. In answering your question of ‘What Is A “Metric” In Google Analytics?’, I would kindly direct your attention to the column outlined in blue, which is a measure of the number of clicks each search term, or dimension (the red box) got.
The tables in most Analytics reports organize dimension values into rows, and metrics into columns.
A metric is a number that is used to measure one of the characteristics of a dimension.
Metrics are quantitative measurements of your data and can be displayed as sums (total amounts) or ratios (proportions to the whole). Examples included:
- Sessions: The total number of sessions.
- Pages/Session: The average number of pages viewed per session.
- Acquisition: How visitors arrive at your website (Red box in the image below).
- Behavior: How visitors interacted with your website (Green box in the image below).
- Conversions: How visitors converted on your website (Blue box in the image below).
What is the Difference Between Dimension and Metric
Dimensions are attributes/descriptive characteristic of your data. Examples of dimensions include:
- City: indicates the city, which could be “Paris” or “Toronto” or what ever place a user comes from.
- Page: indicates the URL of a page that is viewed.
Dimensions show where, what, why, with whom and how the observed items behave, giving you the ability to describe them in any way you find possible.
Dimensions can have one or more characteristics. A dimension provides context to a metric as a stand alone metric, say “12” is meaningless without a dimension, say “sessions”
