71 terms

Performance & Analytics GlossaryPerformance & Analytics Terms A–Z

The concepts behind measuring how fast a site is and what visitors do there: Core Web Vitals and lab metrics, speed techniques such as caching and compression, field data and real-user monitoring, event tracking, conversions and attribution.

Performance and analytics look at the same question from two sides: how good is the experience, and does it work? The definitions also explain the limits of measurement — for example, that analytics data is not a ranking factor and that a lab score does not replace field data.

A

B

C

D

Database IndexA database index is an additional data structure, most often a B-tree, that keeps the values of one or more table columns sorted and searchable, with pointers back to the matching rows. Instead of scanning the whole table, a query can jump straight to the rows it needs. Indexes can speed up reads dramatically, but they take up storage and slow down writes, because every insert, update and delete must keep them current.

E

F

G

Google Analytics 4 (GA4)Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google's analytics platform for websites and mobile apps that records every interaction as an event with parameters. Page views, scrolls, form submissions and purchases are all measured with the same event model, and sessions and engagement metrics are derived from those events. It replaced Universal Analytics, which stopped processing data in July 2023.

H

I

L

M

P

R

S

T

U

W

#

304 Not Modified304 Not Modified is the HTTP status code a server returns to a conditional GET or HEAD request when the client's stored copy is still valid. The client sends back the earlier ETag in If-None-Match or a date in If-Modified-Since; if nothing has changed, the server replies with a body-less 304 and the client reuses its cached copy.

Other categories

← Back to the glossary