Have you ever wondered what a report is in Google Analytics? Reports are the building blocks of Google Analytics, but what are they made up of?
Each report in either property type is made up of at least one Dimension coupled with multiple Metrics.
- A Dimension is a qualitative measurement, or attribute of your data. Examples include: City, State, Country, Page, Page Title, Acquisition Channel, Referral page, etc.
- A Metric is a quantitative measurement. Examples of metrics include: number of pages viewed, average time on site, number of sessions, average session duration, Conversion rate.
Google Analytics Reports
In each detailed report or summary card (when viewing overview reports) you’ll find descriptive characteristics of your data which are the dimensions of the report. These will be found on the left side of reports or summary cards.
To see a full list of dimensions, check out Google’s guide on Analytics dimensions.
Next to the dimensions will be the quantitative measurements of that dimension, known as metrics, which can be numbers, averages or ratios. These will be found on the right side of reports or summary cards.
To learn more about metrics, check out Google’s guide on Google Analytics metrics.
To add a secondary dimension while viewing a detailed report, you can click on the plus + sign next to the dimension.
Adding a secondary dimension helps sort or aggregate your detailed report.
As you can see, metrics are the specific numbers and data, while dimensions and secondary dimensions are the attributes of that data. Every report in Google Analytics is made up of both Dimensions and Metrics.
Now you know what a report is in Google Analytics! Ever wondered what Google Analytics is? See our article What is Google Analytics to find out more.