This glossary explains key words and concepts found in Blue Triangle. It's a good place to get started learning how to set up and use your Blue Triangle products.
A
A/B Testing Segment
Segments a certain portion of traffic into an A and B segment for direct comparison.
Accessor
Retrieves a value from a designated target, usually without changing any data.
Action
Executes a specific function or instruction on the web page that changes the page in some way. This can be as simple as a mouse click.
Agent
Sends synthetic traffic to a website to measure performance of the site. Agents can simulate specific browser and device types to mimic typical website traffic.
Agent Location
Specifies the location of the server operating an agent.
Anchored Start Time
When a report refreshes, the beginning of the time period selected remains the same day/time as originally selected.
App Cache
The amount of time it takes for a page to retrieve information from the application cache. Caching allows local storage and retrieval of information for loading a page. In the browser, the App Cache time is defined as the time elapsed between Fetch Start and Domain Lookup Start (App Cache = domainLookupStart - fetchStart). If there is no caching, Fetch Start and Domain Lookup Start occur simultaneously. See W3C Navigation Timing for more information.
App Connect
The average time it takes until the HTTP security protocol connect/handshake to the remote host is completed.
Application Programming Interface (API)
A set of protocols, subroutines, and definitions for building application software. An example of an API would be the C++ Standard Template Library.
Arithmetic Mean
Also called the mean or average, this statistical method sums each value in a data set and divides by the quantity of values.
Assertion
Indicates whether a page is functioning properly by looking for an expected result at a certain point in the loading of a web page. An assertion can be a pre- or post-condition in the code that returns a Boolean value regarding code execution.
Average Order Value (AOV)
The average value of a conversion.
Average Revenue
The average revenue per visitor.
Average Revenue Per Converted Session
The average value of each session in which at least one conversion occurred.
B
Bandwidth
The net bit rate for accessing a web page. Bandwidth affects page performance by limiting the rate of data transfer in a browser connected to the internet. Decreased bandwidth will result in increased page load times.
Base Page
The average time the page takes to fetch the HTML file. This is calculated in the browser as the time elapsed between Response Start and Response End (Base Page = responseEnd - responseStart). See W3C Navigation Timing for more information.
Base Page and SSL Monitor
Drives synthetic traffic to a site to track base page and SSL metrics, such as the time for the base page to load, average DNS, average TCP, and SSL success rate.
Blacklist Filters
Listing any domain in a blacklist filter will exclude those domains from results. Depending on the context of the filter, blacklists can be useful for removing unwanted traffic from results, or safeguarding against unsecure sites.
Bounce
Occurs when a visitor to a website navigates away from the site after viewing only one page before Blue Triangle's 30-minute session timeout.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of traffic that navigates away from a site after viewing only one page before Blue Triangle's 30-minute session timeout.
Browser
A piece of software that can access the internet and read HTML files in order to render web pages readable to users. Some examples of browsers are Chrome, Safari, Opera, and Firefox.
Browser/OS/Browser Version
The combination of browser, operating system, and browser version used whenever a visitor accesses a site or page.
Bucket Size
The portion of time used for data aggregation in charts and graphs.
C
Chrome User Experience (CrUX) Report
Google aggregates the performance and experience metric of users who allow data collection in their Chrome browsing sessions on websites across the internet. The CrUX Report allows anyone to access the CrUX data for an origin aggregated on a monthly basis. The CrUX data is also available on a URL-level via the CrUX API. Blue Triangle leverages publicly available CrUC data to provide more enriched historical reporting with the Competitive CrUX Report.
Competitive Index
Complete access to the Industry Benchmarks data as well as allowing you to view the industry averages for over 40 different performance metrics, some coming from Google Lighthouse API and the rest being collected by Blue Triangle's synthetic monitors.
Content Error
Occurs when elements on a page fail to load properly.
Core Web Vitals (CWV)
Google's Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics determined by Google to be important to user experience while viewing a web page and that reflect critical user-centric outcomes. As of March 2024, Core Web Vitals include the following metrics: Interaction to Next Paint (INP), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Google replaced First Input Delay (FID) with INP as the official responsiveness metric in March 2024. Metrics included in CWV may change over time.
Country
The country where the measurement occurred.
Conversion
Occurs when a user on a web site takes a desired action. Examples of conversions include completing a transaction, filling out a form, or signing up for a service.
Conversion Rate (CR)
The percentage of users on a web site who take a desired action. Examples of conversion rates include the percentage of customers completing a transaction, filling out a form, or signing up for a service.
Conversion Type
Either a standard dollar revenue calculation or a brand calculation, which are both expressed in dollars. The brand calculation takes the place of the revenue calculation when a site has no dollar value transaction, so a dollar amount is assigned to each conversion. An example of a brand conversion would be a click event where a user subscribes to a newsletter.
Connect Time
Also shown in the portal as TCP, Connect Time is the time it takes to establish a connection to the web server after DNS lookup and the browser sends the HTTP GET/POST request to a web page URL. In the browser, it is measured as the time elapsed between Connect Start and Connect End (TCP = connectEnd - connectStart). See W3C Navigation Timing for further information.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Measures the sum total of all individual layout shift scores for every unexpected layout shift that occurs during the entire lifespan of the page. It can be measured with synthetic or real user monitoring. For more information, please visit this page.
CLS Attribution (VitalScope)
Identifies the specific DOM elements and timing responsible for a page's Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). A standard CLS score only tells you how much a page shifted, attribution provides the debugging context needed to figure out which element shifted and why.
CLS End
Calculated as the epoch timestamp of the last layout shift that occurred (that timestamp - navigationStart = CLS End)
D
Datacenter Location
The datacenter a user's site experience was served from. Contact your Blue Triangle representative to set up a datacenter location.
Date of Performance Change
The date of a change made to a site that affects page performance. Setting the date allows for comparison of metrics before and after the change. Examples of performance changes are altering the order that third-party tags load or changing CDNs.
Delta
Shows the amount of change in a metric, found by subtracting the initial value of the metric from the final value of the metric. A positive delta indicates an increase in the value of the metric, while a negative delta indicates a decrease in the value.
Device
A piece of equipment used to access the internet. Examples of devices include tablets, cell phones, and computers. When a web page renders, the kind of device (user agent) accessing the page is read by the browser, and the way the page will display can change based on this information.
Discard Sessions Over
A means for getting more accurate results in data analysis, this feature discards a percentage of sessions based on time. The slowest session is in the 100th percentile of traffic speed. For instance, discarding sessions over the 80th percentile eliminates the slowest 20% of site traffic in the analyzed period.
Domain Name System (DNS)
The structure used for naming resources that access a network, including the Internet. While DNS associates several kinds of information with domains, it is most known for assigning IP addresses to domains. As a performance metric, DNS is the averaged time it takes to retrieve the IP address for the domain being called from the DNS (DNS = domainLookupEnd - domainLookupStart). See W3C Navigation Timing for more information.
DNS Hostname Overrides
Bypasses DNS protocols by entering a server-specific IP address for a domain. In development, this can be used to monitor or debug a specific server.
Document Object Model (DOM)
A programming interface that reads the nodes of an HTML, XML, or XHTML document hierarchically, translating nodes of the document into objects to render and modify applications or webpages using a scripting language (most commonly JavaScript for webpages). This interface can be used across multiple platforms, and is independent of programming language. Also see element.
DOM Duration
The average time for the browser to download a page's HTML and finish constructing the document object model (DOM) after the page is requested so that the domComplete event is triggered. Visually, this event occurs when the loading spinner stops spinning, which affects user perception of page speed. DOM Duration is measured as the time elapsed between the DOM Loading and DOM Complete events (DOM Duration = domComplete - domLoading). It occurs during the processing of the page. See W3C Navigation Timing for further information.
DOM Content Loaded (DCL)
The average time for the browser to parse all HTML and finish constructing the document object model (DOM) for a page once it is requested so that the .domContentLoadedEventEnd event is triggered. For this event to fire, scripts must have access to all elements via the DOM API. No parser can be blocking JavaScript on a page. Time to DOM Content Loaded is the time elapsed between Navigation Start and the DOM Content Loaded event (Time to DOM Content Loaded = domContentLoaded - navigationStart). See W3C Navigation Timing for further information.
DOM Interactive (DI)
The average time for the browser to parse all HTML and finish constructing the document object model (DOM) for a page once it is requested so that the .domInteractive event is triggered. After this event, users can interact with the page as it continues to load. Time to DOM Interactive is measured as the time elapsed between Nagivation Start and DOM Interactive (Time to DOM Interactive = domInteractive - navigationStart). See W3C Navigation Timing for further information.
Domain
Represents an IP resource, usually understood as the name and address of a website.
Duration
The average time all objects in a domain or individual objects spend loading. Within a domain, this does not include time between files firing. See W3C Resource Timing for more information.
E
Element
Contains a portion of HTML that modifies the way a page displays.
Error Text
Unique text on a webpage when an error occurred in the loading of a page. Having this identifier allows a monitor to report when an error occurred by searching for text known to appear on the page when an error occurs.
Exit
Occurs when a visitor navigates away from a page after visiting at least one other page on the site. An exit occurs automatically after a 3-hour window of activity.
F
Film Strip
In web performance terms, a film strip is series of screen captures of a page at regular intervals over the life of the page loading.
First Byte (FB)
The amount of time once a page is requested for the first byte of data for the page to reach the user's browser. It indicates the responsiveness of the server. In the browser, this is measured as the time elapsed between Request Start and Response Start (First Byte = responseStart - requestStart). This is sometimes referred to as Round Trip Time (RTT) request time. First Byte is only part of the total time for Time To First Byte (TTFB), but a slow First Byte time on the origin server for a page will affect the initial web page document delivery as well as any subsequently downloaded content delivered from the origin server.
First Contentful Paint (FCP)
First Contentful Paint measures the time from navigation to the time when the browser renders the first bit of content from the DOM. It can be measured with synthetic or real user monitoring. For more information, please visit this page.
First Input Delay (FID)
Measures the time from when a user first interacts with your site (i.e. when they click a link, tap on a button, or use a custom, JavaScript-powered control) to the time when the browser is actually able to respond to that interaction. It can only be measured with real user monitoring. FID was replaced by Interaction to Next Paint (INP) as the official Core Web Vital for responsiveness in March 2024, but is retained here for historical reference. For more information, please visit this page.
First Paint (FP)
Measures the time elapsed from the initial HTTP request for a page until the browser displays the first content on the page. It is a browser-reported metric.
Fully Loaded Time
The time from the start of the first request to the end of the last request to finish. For more information on Fully Loaded Time, check out this article.
G
Geometric Mean
An averaging method in statistics and mathematics, which is calculated by multiplying each value in a data set and taking the root of that product equal to the quantity of values in that data set. Geometric mean is used where the methodology for arithmetic mean does not yield a correct result, such as with exponential growth.
GET
Requests the retrieval of information from the server in HTTP by RESTful API protocols.
Granularity
Changes the level of detail used for analyzing, down to 0.1 seconds.
H
HTTP Referer
Identifies the address of the webpage that linked to the resource being requested.
I
Image Size
The average size of images in MB on the selected page or pages.
Impact Score
Impact Score takes % Impact and % of Onload Activity ad weighs them equally. A higher % impact means that the tag has a lot of activity on the page before onload, both relative to onload itself and relative to the rest of the domains that load content on the pages being analyzed.
Industry Benchmarks
A list of more than 1500 sites organized by industry featuring a few performance metrics comparing data from the week prior to the current date.
Interaction To Next Paint (INP)
Interaction to Next Paint measures page responsiveness by observing the latency of all user interactions on a page and returning the value of the longest duration between a user interaction and the page's next visual response, with a few exceptions. The value of INP across multiple users and pages gives an idea of how long users may have to wait for a response to their interaction with a website. A lower INP number is desirable, with a current target for the 75th percentile of users at or below 200ms. INP replaced First Input Delay (FID) as an official Core Web Vital in March 2024. It can only be measured with real user monitoring. For more information, please visit this page.
INP Attribution (VitalScope)
Explains why a specific Interaction to Next Paint (INP) score occurred on a webpage. While the standard INP metric tells you how long a slow interaction took, INP Attribution breaks down the exact cause and location of that delay.
Internet Service Provider/Organization (ISP)
The organization providing Internet access for visitors to the site.
IP Address
Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label assigned to each device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. - Wikipedia
J
JS Errors (sampled)
We sample your user traffic at around 1 percent of your visitor traffic to track the amount of JS Errors being logged in your end user's devices. Detailed JS Error Reporting is available in the JS Errors section.
K
Kickoff Time
The time and date that a synthetic monitor begins running.
L
Landing Page
The first page a visitor views in a session.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Largest Contentful Paint measures the time from navigation to the time when the browser renders the largest bit of content from the DOM. It can be measured with synthetic or real user monitoring. For more information, please visit this page.
LCP Attribution (VitalScope)
Breaks down exactly why a page's Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) took as long as it did. Instead of just giving you a single, opaque score (e.g., "LCP = 3.5 seconds"), attribution isolates the specific HTML element responsible for the paint and dissects the time spent across the four distinct technical phases of the loading timeline.
Latency
The amount of time delay before a transfer of data begins.
Locator
Tells a script which elements on a page to find and interact with.
Long Animation Frames (LoAF)
Long Animation Frames is a browser API that flags rendering frames long enough to cause visible jank or delayed responsiveness — typically frames lasting longer than 50 milliseconds. It identifies the specific script responsible for a long frame, helping teams pinpoint the cause of degraded Interaction to Next Paint (INP) and overall page smoothness. It can only be measured with real user monitoring.
LoAF Attribution (VitalScope)
The capability within the browser's Long Animation Frames API (LoAF) to pinpoint the exact scripts, execution sources, and rendering behaviors causing lag or visual delay (jank) on a webpage. When a rendering frame is blocked and takes longer than the standard 50-millisecond threshold, LoAF does not just log that a delay happened; it attributes the slowness to the specific source code responsible. This helps developers diagnose and improve their website's Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric.
M
Maintenance Window
Gives a known period in which a site may be undergoing maintenance and is unresponsive, or a known period in which a site is not functioning at its full capacity. Setting a maintenance window prevents the reporting of any data collected during these periods in order to limit statistical errors.
Maximum Exit Rate Threshold
Changes the critical reporting baselines on the page for exit and exit rate. For instance, setting a threshold of 85% will cause pages with an exit rate beneath that maximum to be coded green, whereas pages with exit rates greater than the threshold are color coded yellow, orange, and red to designate how far off the threshold the exit rate for that page is. Percentages must be integers.
Maximum Onload Threshold
Changes the critical reporting baselines on the page for onload. For instance, setting a threshold of 5 seconds will cause pages with an average onload time beneath that maximum to be coded green, whereas pages with onload greater than the threshold are color coded yellow, orange, and red to designate how far off the threshold the average onload for that page is. Times must be entered as whole seconds.
Measure Cached
Allows the browser to reload the page without clearing its cache after running the initial measurement when enabled. Both measurements are stored, the second containing "-cached" at the end of the page name.
Minimum Sample Size
Limits the results in Object Level Detail to objects with a file count above this number. This filter is most useful when sorting the waterfall in Object Level Detail by slowest load time rather than by file count to filter out objects with a low number of hits.
Mobile Emulation
Enables a monitor to emulate traffic as a user agent on a mobile device.
Multi-Step, Real Browser Monitor
Drives synthetic traffic to a site that crawls through a specific subset of site pages. These monitors can be used to mimic user paths. For example, a multi-step browser can follow top paths, top conversion paths, or marketing campaign paths that real users take.
N
Network Speed (Net Speed)
The speed of traffic from a specific network, such as cellular networks or dial-up networks, measured as bandwidth.
Network Emulation
Emulates the way users on different connections experience the site by changing the bandwidth at which the monitor operates and allowing for built-in delays in loading.
Number of Domains
A performance metric that details the amount of domains for a specific page or group of pages.
Number of Elements
A performance metric that details the amount of elements on a specific page or group of pages.
O
Object Level Detail Only
On the Performance Detail page for RUM and Synthetic Monitoring, selecting this option beneath the left scatter-plot shows all page views that are not filtered out and that have object level detail associated with them. Clicking a page view in the left chart will change the right scatter plot to reveal all page views for the session the selected page view was in. Selecting a triangular data point from the scatter plot for all page views in a session gives activity on the domain and object level.
Onload
The average amount of time required for the server to load the page completely so that the .onload event is triggered, including content, images, JavaScript, CSS, and other external files. Also known as Page Load Time (PLT). See w3c Navigation Timings for more information.
Operating System (OS)
The programming a piece of hardware runs on.
Opportunity
The predicted amount of revenue to be gained by improving performance.
Optimal Page Speed
The calculated onload time for a page necessary for the best return in revenue. This metric provided by Blue Triangle's algorithms should be the starting point for any page performance improvement.
Other Notable Metrics
Metrics that supplement the Core Web Vitals (CWV) in Google's PageSpeed Insights (PSI) report. These metrics include First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Time To First Byte (TTFB). FCP has supplemented CWV in the report since the report's inception. TTFB is an experimental metric for supporting CWV, but is a long-established metric for web analytics reporting and is derived directly from Navigation Timings and Resource Timings specifications.
P
Page and Object Level Detail
A filtering option on the Performance Detail page for both RUM and Synthetic monitoring. Selecting this option beneath the scatter plot shows all page views that are not filtered out. From there, clicking on a page view in the left-hand chart will change the right chart display to show all page views for the session the selected page view was in. These page views may or may not have object level detail associated with them.
Page Group
Groups pages into categories based on page relationally. For instance, all pages in a checkout process can be grouped, as can all pages in a product category.
Page Name
The name of a specific page of a website.
Page Onload
Navigation Timings Onload Event (Onload - NavigationStart)
Page Size (Compressed)
The average data size delivered over the Internet to construct a page view in a user's browser. Also called wire size because data is delivered "across the wire," as in a connection. This data is usually compressed to save on monetary costs associated with communicating data online as well as the amount of time it takes to load a page, since more data takes longer to deliver.
Page Size (Uncompressed)
The average data size of a constructed page, after all content for the page has been transferred over the Internet and been decompressed by the browser for rendering properly. The uncompressed page size is affected by the amount of compression done for initial data delivery, and uncompressed page size in turn affects the time it takes to load a page
Page Text Verification
Allows a monitor to verify whether a page did or did not load successfully.
Page Timeout
The maximum time in seconds before an agent will timeout when hitting the target URL if the page is unresponsive.
Page View
The number of times a single page of the site was viewed in a designated period. A page view requires a page to load fully before it is counted.
Page View Exit Rate
The percentage of users viewing a page that navigate away from the site while after viewing more than one page ((Exits / Page Views) * 100). This is different from Session Exit Rate.
Page Views Per Session
Total number of page hits on your site for the selected time period.
pageWireSize
pageWireSize on the synthetic side is calculated by adding up the "encodedBodySize" of all network requests from the Chrome Network Logs. The encodedBodySize read-only property represents the size (in octets) received from the fetch (HTTP or cache), of the payload body, before removing any applied content-codings.
Path
Refers to the steps a customer takes when navigating a site. A path consists of a landing page and any subsequent pages a customer visits in a session.
Path Name
Assigns a title to the navigation path a customer might take through a site. Paths can be named for marketing campaigns, for regular site traffic, or for any other traffic pattern on the site.
Path Step
Identifies a step in a customer path. Steps are usually named after particular pages visited.
Percent Delta
The percent of change in a metric between two specific data points. It is found by subtracting the initial value of the metric from the final value of the metric (the delta), and then dividing that result by the initial value of the metric and multiplying by 100. A positive percentage indicates an increase in the value of the metric, while a negative percentage indicates a decrease in the value.
Percent Impact
The percentage of domain activity for that particular domain out of all total domain activity before whatever the "Slowest Domain Before" dropdown is set to. By default it is 120 seconds, it will be the portion of activity that this domain accounts for out of all domain activity on the page prior to 120 seconds of load.
Percent of Onload Activity
How much domain prior to Onload compared to the time at which Onload occurred.
Performance Metric
Different browser performance measurements such as Onload, Time to DOM Interactive, or Time to DOM Content Loaded, which are used for reporting results.
POST
Requests the sending of information to the server in HTTP, which can create new resources or modify existing ones. POST is a command to the server constructed using RESTful API.
Pre-Transfer
The time it takes the HTTP request to begin transferring data.
Processing
The time page spends loading the DOM. In the browser, this is the time elapsed between DOM Loading and Load Event Start (Processing= loadEventStart - domLoading).
R
Redirect
The time elapsed between Redirect Start and Redirect End in the browser timings (Redirect = redirectEnd - redirectStart). This elapsed time is added into the calculation for First Byte time in the event of a redirect. See W3C Navigation Timing for further information.
Region
Specifies where site traffic from real users originates by state, province, or other geographic area within a country.
Report Name
Assigns a name to a report for quick identification. The more informational the report name, the better (e.g. "Home Page Bounce Rate").
Report Time Period
Changes how often a report is generated and what time period the report uses to calculate its values.
Report Type
Configures what kind of metrics are included in a report.
Request
The time spent issuing the network request for a page load or a page resource load. In the browser, this is the time elapsed between Request Start and Response Start (Request = responseStart - requestStart). Also see First Byte for a page load.
Request Cookies
Contains additional information in clear text found in cookies during an HTTP request. Entering a cookie name and value will target only the specified cookie for retrieval.
Request Headers
Contains additional information about the resource to be fetched from the server or about the client accessing the server. Entering a header name and value will target only specified information within the specified header.
Response
The time spent retrieving the server response. In the browser, this is the time elapsed between Response End and Response Start (Response = responseEnd - responseStart)
Retrieve HTML Body
Allows the HTTP request to retrieve the information contained in the Body element of the HTML document.
Revenue
Measures the average amount of money generated when a customer visits a site in order to estimate the value of each additional visitor. It is calculated by dividing the total revenue by the total number of visitors.
Revenue Attribution
The amount of revenue that can be attributed to a performance change in a given period.
Revenue Difference
The impact on revenue due to a change in web performance. A negative value typically means there was a degradation in site speed after the performance change, whereas a positive value typically means that page response time improved.
Rolling Revenue Analysis
The look-back period from the current date used for calculating opportunity and analyzing impact of changes on a site.
Rolling Start Time
The beginning of the time period selected moves with each refresh so that duration of the period remains the same.
Note: When the selected time period is seven days or greater, auto refresh start time must be rolling.
S
Safe Domain
Lists the domains that contribute to the building of a page that have been determined "safe" for users. To add a domain to the list, drag and drop the domain.
Sales Funnel
A visual for a path taken by a potential customer, and can be predicted by looking at top paths in Marketing Insights. The goal for a sales funnel is to direct as much traffic as possible that enters a sales funnel all the way to a conversion at the end of the sales funnel.
Screen Capture
An image of the page either for a certain percentage of page hits once onload is reached or when an error is detected in the loading of the page.
Script
A set of commands coupled with targets for synthetic traffic to complete when hitting a page or a set of pages.
Script Command
Instructs a script to run a program. Each program takes a specific action, sometimes toward a designated target on the page where the script is running.
Script Name
Allows a script to be named by the kind of traffic it mimics, which pages the script hits, or the kind of actions the script takes. The script name populates the "Traffic Segment" field in the filter for the Synthetic Monitoring portion of the portal.
Script Pattern
Enables a script to determine whether text of a matching or similar type is present or absent on a page.
Script Timeout (single-page)
The maximum time in seconds before an agent will timeout when hitting the target URL if the page is unresponsive.
Script Timeout (multi-step)
A designated amount of time that a script will pause before continuing to the next action.
Script Upload
Allows the uploading of a Selenium IDE synthetic script that captures actions on a site and translates those actions into commands. See "How to Format Scripts" on the script creation page for further formatting instructions.
Selenium
A piece of software that automates browsers. Selenium IDE is a plugin for the Firefox browser and can be used to automate script creation for the Blue Triangle Portal. (A similar extension available in the Google Chrome browser is called Katalon.)
Sessions
The number of visitors who are active on a website. Sessions can include multiple page views and conversions. The session timeout for Blue Triangle occurs after 30 minutes of inactivity, and the maximum time limit for a session is 3 hours. Sessions are also known as visits.
Session Exit Rate
The percentage of sessions that navigate away from a page after viewing at least one other page on the site ((Exits / Sessions) * 100). This is different from Page View Exit Rate.
Single Page, Real Browser Monitor
Drives synthetic traffic to a site for measuring performance metrics on one page.
Sort By
Changes which objects are displayed in a waterfall chart based on the number of files an object contains or by the amount of time the object takes to load.
SSL
The average time required to process a request for a page through the web server's security protocol. SSL is one type of security protocol, and stands for Secure Sockets Layer, but here it is used as a generic term for any accepted security protocol on the server. In the browser, this is measured as the time elapsed between Secure Connection Start and Connect End (SSL = connectEnd - secureConnectionStart). See W3C Navigation Timing for further information.
SSL Certificate
Allows a browser to connect to the site through the security layer of the server that hosts the site domain. The SSL certificate is not exclusive to SSL only, and can apply to other security protocols. Retrieving the SSL certificate ensures the security of HTTP (HTTPS is Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure).
SSL Success Rate
The percentage of traffic that successfully received the SSL certificate for a site from the server.
Start Transfer
The time in the HTTP request until the first byte data is about to be transferred. This includes the time of the pre-transfer as well as the time the server takes to calculate the result.
Script Step
The name of a step in a script, usually based on the action being taken by the script.
Speed Index
Measures how quickly content is visually displayed during page load. To collect Speed Index measurements, Film Strip must be enabled in your synthetic monitor configuration. This metric is only collected in synthetic measurements.
T
Tag Quality
Tag quality is essentially the inverse of Impact Score, where a lower Impact Score results in a higher Tag Quality star rating. Tag quality is meant to show whether the tag is "chatty" and creates unnecessary network calls on the page or takes a long time to load its content. More stars means less time spent downloading and/or communicating with the network.
TCP
Short for Transmission Control Protocol, TCP is the time it takes to establish a connection to the web server after DNS lookup and the browser sends the HTTP GET/POST request to a web page URL. In the browser, it is measured as the time elapsed between Connect Start and Connect End (TCP = connectEnd - connectStart). See W3C Navigation Timing for further information.
Time To First Byte (TTFB)
Defined in the W3C specifications as the time elapsed between startTime and responseStart (responseStart - startTime). This metric is meant to show the responsiveness of a server and the time it takes to create a connection between the server and browser. TTFB includes redirect time, service worker startup time (where applicable), DNS lookup time, TCP time, and first byte (FB or request) time. It was added to Google's PageSpeed Insights report as an experimental metric for supplementing the Core Web Vitals metrics in May 2022. For more information, please visit this page.
Time To Interactive (TTI)
A performance metric that measures how long it takes a page to become interactive. "Interactive" is defined as the point where: 1) The page has displayed useful content, which is measured with First Contentful Paint. 2) Event handlers are registered for most visible page elements. 3) The page responds to user interactions within 50 milliseconds. It can only be measured with synthetic monitoring. For more information, please visit this page.
Time To DOM Content Loaded
A web performance metric that measures the time it takes for a browser to fully receive, load, and parse the initial HTML document.
Time To DOM Interactive
A web performance timing property that marks the exact moment when the browser finishes parsing the main HTML document and the Document Object Model (DOM) state is set to "interactive"
Time Of Measurement
The exact time stamp that our cloud system receives the data for the measurement.
Time Period
Measures from the start of the minute selected up to the beginning of the last minute selected. When selecting days, the period measures from the midnight of the first day up until midnight of the last day selected.
Time Zone
Sets the time zone of the time period selected for reporting.
Top Combined Paths
The most popular paths visitors traverse on a website.
Top Converted Paths
The most popular paths resulting in conversions that visitors follow on a website.
Top Non-Converted Paths
The most popular paths resulting in no conversion that visitors follow on a website.
Total Blocking Time (TBT)
Measures the total amount of time that a page is blocked from responding to user input, such as mouse clicks, screen taps, or keyboard presses. It can be measured with real user and synthetic monitoring. For more information, please visit this page.
Total Revenue
Measures the total amount of money generated as a result of all conversions on the site.
Total Revenue Loss
The amount of potential revenue lost since the date of a performance change.
Traffic
A general term for all visitors to a website. As a group of analytics, it includes page hits, page views, visits, unique visits, and sessions.
Traffic Medium
How users arrived at your content, including "organic search" for unpaid search traffic, "none" for direct traffic, and custom values such as e-mail traffic.
Traffic Segment
A category that groups the kind of traffic that visits a site, determined by the owners of a site and identified using cookies or JavaScript variables. Examples of traffic segments include repeat visitors or visitors from marketing campaigns.
Traffic Source (HTTP Referer)
Selecting a referer only allows measurements from users that came from a particular source, such as a search engine, other website, or a direct navigation.
Trailing 30 Day Sales
The total revenue generated in the 30 days prior to a selected end date.
Trim
Hides data slower than the trim time to eliminate statistically insignificant or incorrect data. The default trim is 120 seconds.
U
Unknown Domain
Used to identify the domains that contribute to the building of a page that have not yet been deemed safe or unsafe.
Unsafe Domain
Used to identify the domains that contribute to the building of a page that have been determined a security risk on the page.
URL
The web address of a page. In more technical terms, URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and points to the location of a resource by including the access mechanism for that resource. In a URL, examples of this access mechanism would be http:// (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and ftp:// (File Transfer Protocol). URLs are a subset of URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers). All URLs are URIs, but only URIs that include a resource access mechanism are URLs.
User
Any browser that navigates to a website, tracked over the duration of a session using cookies. Browser cookies also allow differentiation between new and returning users. Also known as a visitor.
User Agent String (UA String)
Assigns a string as the name of the user agent when creating a monitor.
V
Variable Name
A name given to an object on a page. When identifying a variable name for a script command, the script will look for the matching variable name of an object on the page that the command can target.
Verify Text
Unique text on a webpage when it loads correctly. Having this identifier allows a monitor to report when a page loads successfully by searching for text known to appear on the page when a successful page load occurs.
Vertical
Specific description of a group of companies that focus on a shared niche or specialized market; also called a 'Traffic segment'
Visitor
Any browser that navigates to a website, tracked over the duration of a session using cookies. Browser cookies can allow differentiation between new and returning visitors. Also known as a user.
VitalScope
VitalScope is Blue Triangle's root-cause attribution feature for Core Web Vitals. Instead of only reporting a metric's value, VitalScope breaks Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Long Animation Frames (LoAF) down into their underlying causes — the specific element, selector, or script responsible — so teams can go straight to a fix. It is available in Real User Monitoring only.
W
Wait Time
The amount of time a script will wait before continuing to the next step.
Web Vitals
Web Vitals is an initiative by Google to determine metrics that quantify some aspect of user experience while visiting a web page. Core Web Vitals (CWV) are the most important metrics in this initiative, and currently include Interaction to Next Paint (INP), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Additional web vitals metrics support the CWV metrics, and include Time To First Byte (TTFB), First Contentful Paint (FCP), Total Blocking Time (TBT), and Time To Interactive (TTI).
Window ID
An identifier for a window that allows Selenium scripts to switch between windows during operation. Selenium scripts can only operate on one window at a time, so this allows a script to navigate a page like a user would, interacting with popups and pages that open in a new window or tab.