Sampling is the practice of calculating trends based on a "sample" of the data that's available - not all of it.

Google Analytics samples data to save time and resources. Sampling usually only occurs on larger About.com sites and/or in the busy morning hours in the US.

While sampling doesn't often significantly impact averages like bounce rate, pages/session, and session duration, it will, by definition, cause pageview, session, and other whole numbers to be innacurate.

Sampling occurs more often when pulling data into a tool like ExpertFocus, but it can happen in Google Analytics reports as well. To see if sampling is happening in GA itself, take note of the "% of sessions" note at the top of any GA report. Anything less than 100% implies sampling.

See Google's About Sampled Data and How Sampling Works help documents if you'd like to learn more about sampling in Google Analytics.

Granting the About.com ExpertFocus tool access to your Google Analytics data means just that. ExpertFocus will be able to pull data about your Google Analytics accounts into the tool and display it for you throughout the ExpertFocus site.

ExpertFocus connects to Google Analytics via OAuth 2.0. No data, including usernames or passwords, are visible to anyone but you even though you see your private data on ExpertFocus.

A pageview is a view of a page that's tracked by Google Analytics.

Repeat views of a page during a single visit, including page refreshes, all count as additional pageviews.

In general, more pageviews is better than less pageviews.

About.com uses Google Analytics to track all of the pages you've authored as well as a number of other pages that appear on your site.

Inline links are the links to other pages that you manually create in the body of your content or that are automatically inserted into the body via the SmartLinking tool.

An inline link could be a link to another page on your site, a page on another About.com site, or a URL anywhere else on the web.

The inline link click density is the ratio of total inline link clicks to the pageviews on the page.

In general, a higher click density is better than a lower click density.

A higher click density usually mean that the visitor to the page is more engaged with the content, possibly driving more pageviews across your site.

One easy way to increase click density on a page is to increase the number of helpful inline links in the content.

An exit occurs on a page when a visitor leaves the site from that page. This page's exit rate tells you how often visitors to this page leave after viewing it.

Some exits are due to closing the browser window or directly navigating to another website, while others may be due to clicks on inline links you have to pages on other sites, but any navigation away from your site from this page counts as an exit.

In general, a lower exit rate is better than a higher exit rate. However, visitors always leave your site from somewhere so you're really only shifting exits around from page to page.

A bounce occurs on a page when a visitor both arrives on, and leaves from, that page. This page's bounce rate tells you how often these single-page visits occur on this page.

In general, a lower bounce rate is better than a higher bounce rate.

Lower bounce and exit rates tend to imply that visitors are happy with what they found and are sticking around to learn more.

Higher bounce and exit rates could mean that visitors didn't find what they wanted and/or aren't interested in anything else they see on the page. It's also possible that you've completely satisifed the visitor's intent and there was no need to keep clicking.

See yesterday's Page report in Google Analytics for all the basics on how this page performed.

These , , and versions of that report show how this page's performance has changed over those time periods.

See yesterday's Source by Landing Page report in Google Analytics for a complete list of external traffic sources that sent visitors to this page.

Included here are all the search engines, email newsletters, websites, social networks, and other outside-your-site sources of traffic to this page.

These , , and versions of that report will show how landings on this page from those sources has changed over those time periods.

See the Previous Page Path column in yesterday's Navigation Summary report for this page in Google Analytics for a complete list of your pages that sent traffic to this page.

These , , and versions of that report will show how visits to this page from your other pages has changed over those time periods.

See yesterday's inlineLink Event report in Google Analytics for a complete list of the inline links on this page that were clicked.

These , , and versions of that report show how clicks on this page's inline links has changed over those time periods.

See the Next Page Path column in yesterday's Navigation Summary report for this page in Google Analytics for a complete list of your content that this page drove traffic to.

These , , and versions of that report will show how visits from this page to your other pages has changed over those time periods.

See the week's Page report in Google Analytics for all the basics on how this page performed.

These , , and versions of that report show how this page's performance has changed over those time periods.

See the week's Source by Landing Page report in Google Analytics for a complete list of external traffic sources that sent visitors to this page.

Included here are all the search engines, email newsletters, websites, social networks, and other outside-your-site sources of traffic to this page.

These , , and versions of that report will show how landings on this page from those sources has changed over those time periods.

See the Previous Page Path column in the week's Navigation Summary report for this page in Google Analytics for a complete list of your pages that sent traffic to this page.

These , , and versions of that report will show how visits to this page from your other pages has changed over those time periods.

See the week's inlineLink Event report in Google Analytics for a complete list of the inline links on this page that were clicked.

These , , and versions of that report show how clicks on this page's inline links has changed over those time periods.

See the Next Page Path column in the week's Navigation Summary report for this page in Google Analytics for a complete list of your content that this page drove traffic to.

These , , and versions of that report will show how visits from this page to your other pages has changed over those time periods.

See the month's Page report in Google Analytics for all the basics on how this page performed.

These , , and versions of that report show how this page's performance has changed over those time periods.

See the month's Source by Landing Page report in Google Analytics for a complete list of external traffic sources that sent visitors to this page.

Included here are all the search engines, email newsletters, websites, social networks, and other outside-your-site sources of traffic to this page.

These , , and versions of that report will show how landings on this page from those sources has changed over those time periods.

See the Previous Page Path column in the month's Navigation Summary report for this page in Google Analytics for a complete list of your pages that sent traffic to this page.

These , , and versions of that report will show how visits to this page from your other pages has changed over those time periods.

See the month's inlineLink Event report in Google Analytics for a complete list of the inline links on this page that were clicked.

These , , and versions of that report show how clicks on this page's inline links has changed over those time periods.

See the Next Page Path column in the month's Navigation Summary report for this page in Google Analytics for a complete list of your content that this page drove traffic to.

These , , and versions of that report will show how visits from this page to your other pages has changed over those time periods.