Drilldown
Also called: content drill down, in-depth analysis or detailed weather report
In a drill down, information is first analyzed at a global level, then the depth of each section can be explored. In a graphical interface, this can be facilitated with the ability to click on categories or segments, after which a breakdown of the underlying data appears. With each click-through, more detailed information is tapped into.
An example of such in-depth analysis is the "content drill down" of various Web statistics pages (including Google Analytics). Here, information can be obtained about the visitor numbers of individual pages by looking them up in the website's hierarchical structure. This does require that the Web site use logically structured friendly urls.
The term is widely used in the analysis of statistical information, but there are many ways in which a drill down can be performed. For example, even the visit to a Web site, where different pages are clicked by the visitor to obtain increasingly targeted information, can be labeled a drill down.
