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Reports

The following documentation is for the various reports created from Google Analytics data in Looker Studio (formerly known as Google Data Studio).

General Information

Current 30 day and FY cycle reports should hit on a majority of data needed.  To request a custom report, reach out to Bobby Hash to begin the discussion. 

Term Definition
Google Analytics The online analytics platform that tracks users and views to our websites/webpages.
UA / Google Analytics 3 The previous (retired) version of Google Analytics. 
GA4 / Google Analytics 4 Google Analytics 4, the current analytics platform that pulls data for our website traffic.
Looker Studio Formerly known as Google Data Studio, Looker Studio is Google's report and dashboard tool for presenting and visualizing data from Google Analytics, Google Sheets, and other data sources.
Session A single visit to the website, having one or more events such as page views, purchases, or other events.

A session is reported when the session_start event is collected by Google Analytics. The default session timeout is 30 minutes, which means that if someone is inactive on your website for over 30 minutes, a new session will be reported if they perform another action, for example, viewing another page.
Views Reports the total number of times events have been collected on a viewed page. 
Example: a user who navigates to the Homepage, then the Training page, and then back to the homepage will result in two views of the Homepage and one view of the Training page.
User An individual that interacts with the website or app. Each user can visit the website multiple times.  
Example: One person can create three sessions on your website, with each session containing multiple page views (such as they have multiple browser windows open with sessions, or sessions across various devices).

Each unique device ID will be counted as a separate user by default, which means someone visiting your website on multiple devices (each with their device ID) will mean more than one user is reported.
Bounce Rate Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that last less than ten seconds, do not include a conversion, and/or only include one page view.
In GA4 bounce rate is the percentage of sessions that are not ‘engaged’.
In the previous version of Google Analytics (UA) this was based off of the bounce metric that reported the number of sessions with a single page view. Replaced by engaged sessions and bounce rate in GA4.
Direct Direct traffic includes users who typed your website’s URL the browser, clicked a link in an email application that lacked UTM tracking, or a bookmark.
Direct sessions can nclude other cases where Google Analytics cannot identify the source of the click, assigning it  'direct' as a last resort.
Engagement Metric for when a user interacts with a webpage.  This includes clicking links, scrolling the page, hovering over elements, etc.
Events GA4 collects all data as events. Events will include page views and other automatically collected events using enhanced measurement. Apart from automatic events, you can also send recommended and custom events to GA4. Learn more about automatic, recommended, and custom events in GA4. 
Click Through Rate /CTR The rate in which users click links to our website / webpages in search results for the specified query.
Medium Medium is one of the dimensions (along with source, campaign and channel) for reporting and analyzing how people found the website/webpage.
Example: ‘organic’ for free search traffic, ‘cpc’ for cost-per-click and ‘referral’ for inbound links from other websites (however we do have reports showing previous page data of our webpages, such as a user moving from the homepage to a contact page of a section). 
New User The number of people that visit your website for the first time in the selected date range. Since most users are based on the Google Analytics tracking code and browser cookies, 
Note: people who cleared their cookies or accessed the website using a different device will be reported as a new user.
Not Set Indicates that a particular piece of information is not available within the report.
This can be from a campaign ID not being set with a link, a user using private mode in a browser, and other reasons.
Organic Organic refers to people clicking an non-pay link to your website/webpage. For example, people clicking through to your website from a free result on a Google search results page.
URL Clicks The amount of clicks URLs related to a query have received in a search result. This can be broken down by landing page to see how many times the search term has driven traffic to the landing page.
Search Impression / Impression Search impressions are the number of times a user sees a link to a website in search results, regardless of whether they click on it.
Average Position The average ranking of your website URLs for the query or queries
Campaign/Campaign ID Campaign name is one of the four main dimensions (along with source, medium and channel) for reporting and analyzing marketing campaigns. The campaign name is provided when you use a campaign-tagged URL for your inbound marketing or your Google Ads campaigns that includes UTM tracking.  Usage: commonly we look at campaign IDs for emails that are created in Adobe Campaign or traffic from URLs in articles we have posted to peer websites (such as the New York Times).  This UTM information is automatically setup with emails in Adobe Campaign. UTMs can be setup for manual emails or external webpages that are sent out.  Contact Bobby Hash for manual UTM assistance. 
Query The actual term a user typed in a search engine before clicking through to your website. The terms can be from paid ads or Google organic search results, depending on the report.
Page Referer / Referral A referral is reported when a user clicks through to your website from another website.
Landing Page The landing page is the first page viewed during a session. It can be useful to review your landing pages to understand the most popular pages people view as they navigate to your website. This can be used to identify potential opportunities to cross-promote or feature other content from your website.
UTM Tags ​​UTM tags are the individual query parameters used to make up a campaign-tagged URL. The UTM tags include utm_name, utm_source, utm_medium, utm_term, utm_content, utm_id, utm_creative_format, and utm_marketing_tactic. UTM stands for 'Urchin Traffic Monitor' (Urchin was the name of the software before it evolved into Google Analytics).

Standard Reports and Types

30 day and FY reports include the following page reports:

Includes a table which showcases total sessions, views, engagement rate, bounce rate, events per session for the month.  Additional features include a Top Ten Most Popular Pages table that shows each Page Title linked to its respective page and the amount of views it received, Sessions by Gender chart, Sessions by Device chart, Percentage increase/decrease boxes for total Sessions, Engagement Rate, Total Users and a Sessions and Pageviews Timeline chart.

These reports are drilled down to a specific unit's webpages only.  It can be based on a 30 day cycle or a FY cycle, depending on the report.

Metrics regarding Traffic Source Medium, Top Page Referrers, a pie chart for Sessions by Device Category, Age, and Gender; chart for Sessions and Pageviews. There are also Sessions, Pageviews, and Engagement Rate boxes to show percentage increase/decrease. 

This is an overall view of traffic from the email medium, where you can see pages that have been viewed from sessions that have started from an e-mail link click into our site. Page Title, Link, Campaign associated with the session, Page Referrer, Sessions, Sessions Per User, Views Per Session and Event Count can be viewed.

This is a filtered list of keywords users used in search queries that led to clicks to our webpages or that our pages showed in search results.  A Landing Page filter is included to further breakdown which search queries led to clicks to specific pages.  4 categories of tables exist.  Each can have up to 10 keywords, with the filter looking to see if the word or words are contained in the query.

The following table breaks down the various keywords that are used in the "Keyword Searches Resulting in Traffic (Filtered)" report, with more units and keywords to be added:

Unit Terms
ARCD animal, vivarium, medical, care, procedure, resource, health, report, vet
IBC/IBCP biosafety, ibc, biosafety committee, biosafety program, institutional biosafety, infectious agent, synthetic, recombinant, biohazard, biosafety sop
Labconnect research lab, research equipment, service center, research service center, labconnect, lab connect, vt labs, virginia tech labs, vt service center
VTNSI vtnsi, national security, vt national security, virginia tech national security, us security, national security center, national security institute, vt security institute, virginia tech security institute
SWVA CCI cybersecurity, commonwealth cyber initiative, southwest va, cci swva, ai, artificial intelligence, virginia cybersecurity, va cybersecurity, cci hub, cybersecurity research
OESRC export, secure, compliance, clearance, travel, foreign, country, oesrc, export control, malign foreign, 
IACUC / ACUP animal, research, iacuc, committee, institutional, procedure, resource, health, report, vet
Research Integrity research integrity, integrity, ethics, research ethics, code of conduct, responsible, rcr, responsible conduct of research, ricp, ethics consult
SIRC sirc, scholarly, integrity, compliance, confidential, privacy, conflict, protect, security, ethic
HRPP human, human research, human protection, protection, human research protection, hrpp, human research sop, human research procedures, irb, istitutional review board
OSP osp, sponsored program, sponsor, funding, pre award, post award, contract, award admin, award, subcontract
Contracts and Agreements contract, subcontract, funded agreement, related agreement, modification, non disclosure agreement, mta, material transfer agreement, membership agreement, data use agreement, 
Postdoctoral Associates postdoc, post doc, vt postdoc, vtpa, chris smith, faculty mentor, scholar, program, postdoc leadership, postdoc community
CCI cybersecurity, cci, commonwealth cyber initiative, va cybersecurity, virginia cybersecurity, 5g security, cci node, cci va, va cci

Raw Search Term Ranks

This is an unfiltered list of all the search queries that led to clicks to our pages with a landing page filter to allow ability to see which terms led to clicks tot that page.

The table includes query, URL clicks, click through ratio, search impressions and average position of a research.vt.edu page in the results page of a search.

Internal Search

This report allows ability to see searches that have occurred on the website using the internal search engine.   This is broken down by the unit's parent URL (such as OESRC's would be any pages under www.research.vt.edu/oesrc).

  • Site Overall Search will show the number of searches across all unit pages.
  • Searches by URL show the pages where searches occurred.
  • Internal Query will show the queries typed in.
  • Charts - Internal Searches Over Time chart shows a timeline of searches, and device usage is seen in the Searches By Device chart. 

This will include a link to this documentation page as well as any related reports.

Other Reports

There are some reports that are created for the Research and Innovation Communications and Marketing team for monitoring purposes.

Has a filter to breakdown by our various units (OSP, SIRC and its offices, OESRC, ARCD, etc).  Shows Page URL, Page Title, Sessions, Views and Engagement Rate (with percentage increase/ decrease

This report is for the Research and Innovation Marketing and Communications team to view all of the traffic and user trends for www.research.vt.edu.  This is set to be a 30 day report from the day that the report is opened and viewed.  It contains the following pages:

  1. www.research.vt.edu Website Overview
  2. vt.edu/research Website Overview
  3. Unit Pages Report
  4. ORI Sections Report
  5. news.vt.edu Research Stories
  6. Traffic Sources and Behavior
  7. Newsletter Traffic
  8. Specific Search Terms (Filtered)
  9. Raw Search Term Ranks
  10. research.vt.edu Internal Search
  11. Documentation / Links

Additional report pages and changes to standard report pages are noted below:

vt.edu/research Overview

Includes most of the above chart features, with the following changes:

  1. The Top Ten Most Poplular Pages table is replaced by a Page Referral coming into https://vt.edu/research table.  This can be used to review how people access that page being a top-level link of main VT website.
  2. A Page Link Clicks table is featured showing the link text a user would click on, the webpage/resource linked, sessions and event count.

Unit Pages

Has a filter to breakdown by our various units (OSP, SIRC and its offices, OESRC, ARCD, etc).  Shows Page URL, Page Title, Sessions, Views and Engagement Rate (with percentage increase/ decrease

ORI Sections

Similar to the Unit Pages report, this allows direct filtering of top Research and Innovation sections we keep an eye on (Podcast, Impacts and Recognition, Research Development, Research Support, Events, etc.)

news.vt.edu Research Stories

This report provides a look at research stories that are on news.vt.edu and the traffic they are receiving / sending to our pages (www.research.vt.edu) or institute pages.

Search Term Ranks (Filtered)

This is a filtered list of keywords users used in search queries that led to clicks to our webpages, with a Landing Page filter to show which keywords led to clicks to specific pages.  4 categories of tables exist.  Each can have up to 10 keywords, with the filter looking to see if the word or words are contained in the query:

University Research Keywords - keywords used are:

  • research innovation
  • vt research innovation
  • research administration
  • vt research
  • global research
  • hokie research
  • hokie innovation
  • virginia research
  • virginia research university
  • research university

Research Faculty Keywords - keywords used are:

  • research faculty
  • research position
  • research tenure
  • research member
  • vt faculty

OSP Keywords - keywords used are:

  • sponsored programs
  • osp
  • pre award
  • post award
  • contracts
  • funding
  • grant
  • rate
  • negotiation
  • summit

Research Frontier Keywords - keywords used are:

  • health research
  • security research
  • artificial intelligence research
  • ai research
  • quantum research
  • quantum
  • security
  • ai
  • artificial intelligence
  • health

research.vt.edu Internal Search

This report allows ability to see searches that have occurred on our website using the internal search engine.  Site Overall Search will show searches for the entirety of www.research.vt.edu.

Documentation / Links

This will include a link to this documentation page as well as any related reports.

View Report

This is a broader breakdown of the Traffic Sources and Behavior report and the Search Term reports. 

This report provides pages to quickly review the following: 

  • Conversions through buttons used on the website, both in content and used in the right rail menus.
  • Page Title report for a quick look at how titles are shown in Google Search Results.
  • Document Tracker report for seeing which docs, pdfs, xls, etc. exist on our site (only clicks from buttons are tracked at this time).
  • 404 Report to show all internally linked www.research.vt.edu-hosted pages that are not loading correctly or do not exist.
  • Page/Tag report shows all pages that have tags associated, with a listing of their respective tags.