Metrics definitions

Users

A user is a unique visitor in a day. PubPulse does not use cookies: it builds an anonymous identifier from a hash of the IP address, the browser and the website, salted with a random value that changes every day. Over a period of several days, users are the sum of daily unique visitors.

Sessions

A session is a series of pageviews and events by the same user with no gap longer than 30 minutes. A new session also starts at midnight in the website's timezone.

Pageviews and unique pageviews

A pageview is counted each time a page is loaded (or each time your single-page app calls pubpulse('pageview')). Unique pageviews count a page once per session, however many times it was viewed in that session.

Involved sessions

The number of sessions in which a page was viewed at least once. On content reports this is the most reliable measure of reach.

Bounce rate

The share of sessions with only one pageview and no interaction event.

Session duration and time on page

Time on page is measured while the page is visible: the script sends the engaged time when the reader leaves or hides the tab. Session duration is the sum of time on page in the session. Averages exclude sessions with no measured time.

Entry and exit pages

The entry page is the first page of a session, the exit page the last one.

Sources and mediums

Each session gets a source (Google, Facebook, ChatGPT…) and a medium (organic, social, ai, referral, email, direct) from the referrer and from UTM parameters. UTM parameters win over the referrer.

AI traffic

Sessions whose source is an AI assistant. See AI traffic analytics.

Events and custom metrics

An event is anything you send with pubpulse('event_name'). Events can carry dimensions and numeric metrics, which are summed or averaged in reports.

Bots and spam

Known crawlers, monitoring tools, headless and automated browsers are filtered out before anything is stored. You can also restrict the hostnames allowed to send data for each website.