Glossary

Pulse shows a small i beside most numbers, and the sentence behind it is the same sentence you will find here. This page gathers all of them in one place for when you would rather scan than hunt.

Each entry is the short definition: the one thing a reader would otherwise get wrong. The link after it goes to the page that covers the term properly, with the boundaries and the history a single line cannot carry.

A · B · C · D · E · F · H · I · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · V · W · Z

A

Accessibility score — Automated checks only — contrast, labels, ARIA. What Lighthouse cannot verify is listed separately, so 100 does not mean the page is accessible. Read more

Availability — The share of uptime checks that came back healthy across the range. A degraded check — an unexpected status code under 500, or a response slower than 5 s — counts against it, and a failure only counts once the checker has confirmed it. Days are your site’s calendar days. Read more

Avg CTR (Search) — Clicks divided by impressions across the whole period, recomputed from summed counts rather than averaged across daily CTRs — not an average of averages. Read more

Avg position (Search) — Impression-weighted mean rank. Only the date-only sync carries a daily position; before backfill it shows an em dash, never a guess. The chart is inverted: higher is better. Read more

B

Best Practices score — Browser and web-platform hygiene: HTTPS, console errors, deprecated APIs, security headers. It says nothing about load speed. Read more

Bing's day, Bing's timezone — Each daily row is bucketed in Bing's reporting day — a Pacific offset, stored verbatim — which can differ from a Google calendar day by up to 24 hours. Read more

Bounce rate — Share of visits with exactly one pageview — a reload counts as a second, so it ends the bounce. A visit ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. Deltas are percentage points. Read more

Browsers — Parsed from the user agent at ingestion. Hidden when device-info collection is off; unrecognised browsers are dropped rather than bucketed as "Unknown". Read more

C

Cache hit rate — Counted in requests, not bytes. A window with zero requests has no hit rate and shows an em dash, never 0%. The change is in percentage points. Read more

Campaign (UTM) — The campaign name a link was tagged with, grouping every source and medium that carried it. Ranked and weighted like Source (UTM). Read more

CDN days are UTC days — Follows the CDN's own UTC calendar days, not the site-local day the rest of Pulse reports. Every date and preset here is anchored to UTC. Read more

Channels — Assigned server-side from utm_medium first, then the referrer's domain. An unrecognised referrer files as Referral; anything matching neither shows as Unknown — the classifier does not guess. Read more

Checks — Every uptime check run in the range. Read more

Cities — The finest geography resolved — same GeoIP lookup and same two gates as Regions: collection off, or detail capped at country level. Read more

Clicks (Search) — Tiles and chart read the date-only sync that matches Search Console; the tables read a query-dimensioned one that undercounts, so the two will not sum. Read more

Clicks / Impressions / CTR (Bing) — Site-level daily figures are all the synced endpoint returns — no average position. The per-query endpoint isn't synced: it carries no dates and could not honour the date picker. Read more

Content (UTM) — Conventionally tells apart two links or ad variants that share the same source, medium and campaign. Ranked and weighted like Source (UTM). Read more

Countries — Resolved from the request IP at ingestion, which is then wiped. T1, A1, A2, O1, EU and AP are not countries — an anonymising network, a satellite provider, a broad region or an unplaceable IP. Read more

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — How much visible content moved unexpectedly during load, on a unitless scale from 0 up — not a time. Under 0.100 is good. Read more

D

Days view — Per-date breakdown, newest first, mirroring Search Console's own Dates table. CTR is recomputed from each row's clicks and impressions rather than trusted from the response. Read more

Depth and Paths (journeys) — Steps plotted (2–6), and pages kept per step before the rest roll into (other). Raising the pages limit splits (other) open; it adds no sessions. Read more

Devices — Taken from the user agent; when it says nothing, screen width decides — so a narrow desktop window counts as mobile. Read more

Drop-off (journeys) — The change in session count from the previous step: negative when fewer reached this one, positive when paths converged. Step 1 has no previous step, so it shows nothing rather than 0%. Read more

E

Entries — Each session's first pageview inside the range — the landing page. A session that began earlier shows its first page in the window instead. Read more

Entry page (journeys) — Journeys start on any page. To follow the ones that began on one page, add an Entry page filter. Read more

Errors (4xx/5xx) — The upstream chart zero-fills the error series unless errors are explicitly requested, and until 14-08-2026 they were not — so counts written before then were fabricated zeros. A full re-sync rewrote the last 364 days with real counts; anything older still reads zero and proves nothing. 3xx are redirects, not errors. Read more

Events — Counts firings, not people — one visitor firing the same event six times reads 6. Expanding a row loads that event's property keys and recorded values. Read more

Exit pages (funnels) — The pages visitors opened within an hour of dropping off this step, top ten by volume. The final step has no drop-off, so it shows none. Read more

Exits — Each session's last pageview inside the range — for a session still running at the range end, the last page in the window, not its final page. Read more

F

A failed check — Stored as its own row with the cause; the last good numbers stay visible under a "check failed" line. Missing values show an em dash, never zero. Read more

First Contentful Paint (FCP) — Time until the first text or image appeared on screen. Under 1.8s is good. Read more

Funnel breakdown privacy floor — Values with fewer than 5 entrants are withheld entirely — no row, never a zero — so a small slice and an empty one look the same and iterating a dimension cannot isolate one visitor. Read more

Funnel step — Either a page — matched exactly, by substring, or by regex on the path — or an event matched by name, optionally narrowed by property filters. Read more

H

How far CDN history goes back — Two upstream limits — 40 days per request, and no start date older than a year — bound backfilled history at 364 days regardless of connection age. Read more

How funnel numbers are made — Computed from raw events on every request with bot and fraud verdicts applied — those can be revised retroactively, so past numbers can change. Every step must complete within one session, which resets at your site's midnight; days are cut in the site's timezone. Read more

I

Identity reset — Identities reset at the end of the site’s identity window — the calendar month unless its owner chose a shorter one. A range that spans a boundary therefore shows a returning reader once per window, under two different names — that is the identity genuinely resetting, not a duplicate.

Impressions (Search) — Same two sources as Clicks (Search): tiles from the date-only sync, tables from the query-dimensioned one that undercounts, so the two will not sum. Read more

Incidents — Confirmed down or degraded episodes — the durable record. Raw checks are purged after 90 days; incidents are kept. Read more

L

Languages — Self-reported by the browser in Accept-Language, not derived from the IP — a browser setting, not a location. Gated by the audience-data setting, not the geo one. Read more

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — Time until the largest visible element finished rendering. Under 2.5s is good. Read more

Last 24 hours (live card) — Covers the trailing 24 complete UTC hours and ignores the date range above it. The hour in progress is excluded from totals and not plotted. Read more

Lens (journeys) — Pinning a page highlights every hop connected to it across every step it appears at, and dims the rest. Hovering without pinning highlights only that row's own flow. Read more

M

Map — The Countries rows drawn rather than listed — the identical query, non-country codes included. Not a second measurement, so it cannot disagree with the Countries tab. Read more

Median of 3 — Up to three full runs; the one with the median performance score is kept whole — with two, the lower. A metric-by-metric median would describe a page load that never happened. Read more

Medium (UTM) — The same field the Channels classifier reads first, sorting traffic into Paid Search, Paid Social, Email or SMS. Ranked and weighted like Source (UTM). Read more

N

New queries — Distinct queries absent from the preceding period of the same length. The count is exact; the list you can open is capped at 100. The chip hides at zero. Read more

O

Opportunities (Search) — Queries averaging position 4–20 with at least 10 impressions, ranked by impressions. "Potential" is a model — impressions × 8.5% — not a Google figure or a measured gain. Read more

Origin latency — Averaged only over days that pulled from the origin. A day with no pull shows an em dash — the CDN reports 0, and 0ms was never measured. Read more

Origin traffic — Bytes the cache did not absorb — total bandwidth minus cached. The delta is inverted here: a decrease is shown as an improvement. Read more

OS — Parsed from the user agent at ingestion. Unrecognised values are dropped, and the site setting that governs Browsers turns this off too. Read more

(other) — journeys — Pages beyond a step's Paths limit are rolled into one row, not dropped: counts are kept, identities collapse. (other) to (other) hops are not drawn. Read more

Outbound domains — Clicks on links to any other hostname, grouped by destination — so your own apps on another subdomain count too. Counts are clicks, not people.

Outbound from page — The page a visitor was on when they clicked out — where your site sends people away, not where they went.

Outbound links — Each destination link on its own row, with the path after the host. A row opens the link. Counts are clicks, not people.

P

Pages — Pageviews count page loads, so a reload adds one. Visitors counts people, deduplicated monthly — a reload adds no visitor, and neither does a return trip. Bounce and duration stay session-scoped: they describe a visit, not a person. Read more

Pages / visit — Pageviews divided by visits — how many pages someone reads before they stop. A returning reader adds a second visit rather than deepening the first. Read more

Peak hours — Bucketed by the site's own wall clock, not the viewer's, so everyone sees the same grid. Hours with no measured value contribute no weight to averages. Read more

Performance score — Lighthouse's 0–100 performance-category score, measured by Pulse's own Lighthouse runner rather than Google PageSpeed Insights, which it replaced on 14-08-2026. Read more

Provenance boundary (score trend) — The dashed line marks the switch to Pulse's own runner: one PageSpeed Insights run left, a median of three right. A step across it is a change of instrument. Read more

Q

Queries / Pages / Countries / Devices tables — Read from the query-dimensioned source Google undercounts. Sorting runs in the browser over the top 200 rows by clicks; the table says so when the period holds more. Read more

Query position trend — One query's daily average position, drawn inverted so a taller bar is a better rank. Fewer than two days of data says so instead of drawing a flat line. Read more

R

Recent checks — The newest checks for this monitor, whatever range is selected: when each ran, the status code it saw and how long it took. The dot shows the confirmed status, so a blip inside the grace window still reads as up. Read more

Referrers — "Direct" and "Shared Link" both mean no referrer was captured — a typed URL, a bookmark, an app that strips it. The entry referrer sticks for 30 minutes. Read more

Regions — State or province, from the same GeoIP lookup as Countries. Hidden when geographic collection is off, or when the site caps geo detail at country level. Read more

Response status composition — Share of 2xx/3xx/4xx/5xx responses over the loaded range, drawn from the same daily rows as the strips above. 3xx counts as redirects, not errors. Read more

Response time — Average response time across every timed check, failures included. Exact p50 and p95 come from raw checks (kept 90 days) on ranges up to 8 days; longer ranges fall back to the stored daily average, labelled ‘avg’ — never an invented percentile. Read more

S

Screens — Reported by the browser. It has its own site setting — turning off browser/OS/device collection does not turn this off. Read more

Screenshot and filmstrip retention — Kept only on the newest successful check per site and device. An older check with numbers but no picture is the retention rule, not a loading failure. Read more

Scroll depth — Cumulative and per visit, not per page: 80% counts in the 25, 50 and 75 rows. Visits with no scroll reading are excluded, not counted as 0%. Read more

Search data source (why tables and tiles differ) — Search Console drops anonymised queries when a query dimension is requested, so that sync undercounts. Tiles, the chart and the Days table switch to the date-only sync after a zero-error backfill; the query and page tables never do. Read more

SEO score — On-page crawlability checks: meta tags, crawler directives, link text, canonical and hreflang. It measures whether a crawler can read the page, not how it ranks. Read more

Served from (edge regions) — Bandwidth by edge location over the selected range — where bytes were served from, not where visitors are, and not a per-day series. Read more

Served from cache — Bytes the cache served without reaching your origin. The delta compares against the immediately preceding window of the same length. Read more

Site timezone — Days here are your site’s calendar days. Days before the labelled date were bucketed on the old UTC calendar and their raw checks no longer fully survive, so they can’t be re-cut. Read more

Source (UTM) — Only pageviews carrying a utm_source appear here — or on any other Campaigns tab. Untagged traffic never does. Bounce rate and duration are visitors-weighted means. Read more

Speed Index — How quickly the visible page filled in, measured across the whole load rather than one element's timestamp. Under 3.4s is good. Read more

Step (journeys) — Each column is one hop: step 1 is where sessions started, step k is where they were after k−1 recorded hops. Counts are out of that column's total. Read more

T

Term (UTM) — Conventionally the paid-search keyword a link was tagged with. Ranked and weighted like Source (UTM). Read more

Time to Interactive (TTI) — Time until the page could reliably respond to input. Under 3.8s is good. It carries no weight in the Performance score — it is shown for diagnosis, so a poor TTI beside a green gauge is not a contradiction. Read more

Timezones — Self-reported by the device, like Languages — not derived from the IP. The flag is a best-effort guess, blank for zones outside a fixed list. Read more

Total bandwidth (CDN) — All bytes served over the range, cache and origin together. Not a rail of its own — it is the denominator behind "X% of all bandwidth". Read more

Total Blocking Time (TBT) — How long the main thread was blocked, counting only the time past 50ms in each long task, between First Contentful Paint and the page becoming interactive. Under 200ms is good. Read more

Total pageviews — Every page a visitor saw in the range, bots and excluded traffic removed. A reload counts again. In a single-page app each change of path counts, but a link that only changes the query string or the # fragment does not — that is state on the same page. A page that loads in a background tab counts when it is first shown. Read more

Trend line (7-check trailing median) — The line is a trailing median over the last 7 scored checks, not the raw score; with an even count it takes the lower of the two middle values. The dots are the individual checks. Read more

V

Visit duration — Average length of a visit — the time its pages were visible and in use. The clock pauses while the tab is hidden and after two minutes without scrolling, clicking or typing, so a tab left open does not count. Unmeasured visits are excluded, not counted as zero. A visit ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. Read more

W

Weekly / monthly rollup — Clicks and impressions are summed; CTR is recomputed from those sums, never averaged. Position is impression-weighted, and a bucket where no day has one stays empty. Read more

Where a check comes from — Runs on Pulse's own Lighthouse runner, not Google's PageSpeed Insights. The engine is pinned to 13.4.1 and recorded per row, so the instrument stays fixed. Read more

Z

Zero-fill means absence — The CDN returns a value for every bucket asked about, so an all-zero day is indistinguishable from a day the zone did not exist — Pulse refuses to store one. Days with no row leave a gap and render a dash, never a zero. Read more