Metric glossary

Plain-English definitions of the numbers you’ll see in your reports. Where a platform has its own definition, the report uses the platform’s figure.

Views: How many times your posts or videos were seen. One person can count more than once.
Reach: How many different people saw your content or ads. Each person counts once.
Engagements / Interactions: Actions people took on your posts, such as reactions, comments and shares, as the platform counts them.
Engagement rate: Engagements divided by views, as a percentage. It shows how much of the attention your posts got turned into action.
Followers (total): Your follower count. In reports this is a live count taken when the report is generated. See Follower totals below.
New followers: Followers gained during the month.
Posts: How many posts you published in the period.
Top performing posts / videos: Your best posts (or videos, if Top videos is on) for the month. Videos are ranked by views.
Subscribers (YouTube): People subscribed to your YouTube channel.

Paid ads (Meta Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads)

Spend: What you spent on ads in the period, in the ad account’s currency.
Impressions: How many times your ads were shown.
Clicks / link clicks: How many times people clicked your ads. For Meta Ads, link clicks are clicks that lead off the ad, such as to your website.
CTR (click-through rate): Clicks divided by impressions, as a percentage. Higher means the ad earns more clicks for the times it’s shown.
CPC (cost per click): Spend divided by clicks. What each click cost you on average.
CPM (cost per thousand impressions): What it cost to show your ads 1,000 times. A rising CPM means it’s getting more expensive to reach people. The Ad costs alert watches this.
Frequency: The average number of times each person saw your ads (impressions divided by reach).
Active campaigns: Campaigns that were running in the period.

Search (Google Search Console)

Clicks: How many times people clicked through to your website from Google search results.
Impressions: How many times your pages appeared in Google search results.
CTR (click-through rate): Clicks divided by impressions.
Average position: Your average ranking in Google search results. Lower is better: 1 is the top result.
Top search queries: The searches that brought people to your site.
Top landing pages: The pages people landed on from organic search.

Demand and capture

Search demand: The number of times Google showed your pages for a search (your Search Console impressions). It shows how much demand is out there that you’re visible for.
Captured clicks: The searches from that demand that clicked through to your site.
Capture rate: The share of that demand that clicked through (captured clicks divided by search demand).

Website (Google Analytics, Plausible)

Users / visitors: People who visited your website. New users are visiting for the first time.
Organic users: Visitors who arrived from unpaid search results.
Sessions: Visits to your website. One person can have several sessions.
Average engagement time: How long, on average, people actively spent on your site.
Key events / goals: The actions you’ve marked as important in Google Analytics (key events) or Plausible (goals), such as an enquiry form being sent.
Pages: The pages people viewed most.

Keywords and Competitors / Peers

Share of voice: Your share of the clicks available across your tracked keywords, compared with each competitor / peer. Each keyword is weighted by the click share its position earns, so higher positions count far more. Professional and Strategic.
Keyword position: Where you rank on Google Australia mobile results for a keyword. Checked weekly. A month shows its latest check.
Top 100 / Page 1 / Top 3: How many of your keywords rank in the top 100 results, on the first page (top 10), and in the top three.
Local pack: The map results Google shows for local searches.
Ads on page: Whether ads appear on the results page for a keyword.
Google rating / Google reviews: Your average star rating and number of reviews on Google, next to each competitor / peer’s.
Site speed (mobile): How fast a website loads on a phone, for you and each competitor / peer.
New ads / new pages this month: Ads a competitor / peer started running, and pages they added to their website, during the month.

Email (Mailchimp, Brevo, or figures entered by hand)

Subscribers / contacts: People on your email list or audience. New subscribers joined during the month.
Emails sent: Emails sent in the month.
Unique opens / unique clicks: How many different people opened your emails, and how many clicked a link in them. Each person counts once.

Comparisons

Month-on-month change: The change against the previous month, shown as an up or down percentage.
Same month last year: The same month a year earlier, so seasonal swings don’t mislead you.
13-month charts: The last 13 months, so the current month sits next to the same month last year.

Why numbers can differ from the platform

Your report figures can differ slightly from what you see in the platform itself. The usual reasons:

Date range

Reports cover the full calendar month. Platform dashboards often default to a different range, such as the last 28 days. Set the platform to the same calendar month before you compare.

Time zones

Each platform counts days in its own account time zone. If you compare against a view set to a different time zone, activity near midnight at the start or end of the month can fall into a different month.

Follower totals

Follower totals are a live count taken when the report is generated, not a count at midnight on the last day of the month. If you re-run a month later, the total reflects the count at that time.

Late updates

Platforms keep updating recent figures for a few days. A re-run uses today’s data, so it can differ slightly from the report that landed on the 2nd.

Google Analytics compared with Plausible

The two count visitors differently, so their numbers won’t match. If both are connected, the report uses one of them. See Choose which analytics the report uses.

Google Ads campaign choice

If you’ve chosen campaigns for a brand, only the ticked campaigns count. The account total in Google Ads will be higher. See Choose campaigns.

Competitors / Peers added recently

A competitor / peer’s numbers start the day after you add them, so earlier months have no figures for them.