Monday, July 7, 2008

Sivaraman's Column-4: "Google Analytics"

Good Morning! Hope you had nice weekend. Now let me discus about Google Analytics. (A friend has asked me why you always write about Google technologies only. I am a great admirer of Google. Having started a Google topic, I thought I should cover at least some important technologies, before going to other topics. It is virtually impossible to cover all the Google topics. They are daily coming up with new items and to keep pace with them will be rather difficult. Okay!)

Google Analytics is yet another fascinating, free service from Google intended for bloggers, webmasters and online marketers. In short, if you are a blogger like me and want to know how many people visited your blog, where are they from, how much time they spend at your blog, what posting drew them to your blog or what interests them in your blog and such information you can easily get from Google Analytics.


1. Google Analytics has all the features one would expect from a high-end analytics offering. It also provides tightly integrated AdWords support, so one can view AdWords ROI metrics without having to import cost data or add keyword tracking codes.
2. Google Analytics is easy to use for novice marketers, while delivering all of the capabilities that experienced web analytics professionals expect.
3. It is a hosted service that runs on the same servers that power Google. From large, high-traffic corporate sites to small sites, Google Analytics delivers consistent service.
4. If you have an AdWords account, you can use Google Analytics directly from the AdWords interface. Google Analytics also calculates ROI metrics from automatically imported cost and keyword tracking data, saving you time.
5. It tracks all online campaigns, from emails to keywords, regardless of search engine or referral source.
6. Google takes the trust people place in them very seriously, and is pledged to safeguard the privacy of the user’s corporate data. Google understands well that web analytics data is sensitive information, so they accord ironclad protection it deserves.

How to Use Google Analytics:
1. Go to www.google.com/analytics.
2. Sign up with your gmail account. You will be taken to the secured page of Google Analytics.
3. Give your website/blog URL into Accounts Signup Page.
4. Also give your first name, last name, phone number and country and timezone.
5. Click continue button.
6. Read and Accept the Agreement.
7. Tracking code will be provided to you.
8. Copy and paste the tracking code into your website/blog.
9. Click the continue button.
10. You will be taken to Analytics Page.
11. In the homepage, you will be provided with the main details like:
(a) Site Usage: Visits; (ii) Page Views; (iii) AveragePages/Visits; (iv) Bounce rate; (v) Average Time spent at site; (vi) New visits.
(b) Visitors Overview : Number of Visitors
(c) Map Overlay: Countries of Visitors
(d) Traffic Sources: (i) Direct Traffic; (ii) Search Engine; (iii) Referring Site
In Visitors Menu, you can know the following details:
(a) How many people visited your site/blog
(b) How many visits each visitors makes
(c) The browser from which they are viewing
(d) Their Connection Speed
(e) Detailed Map of Countries/Visitors
(f) Time spent on site
(g) New visits
(h) How much time each visitor spends at your site/blog
(i) A comparison of Returning Visitors and New Visitors
(j) Language of visitors
(k) Visitors browser’s OS: Flash version/JavaSupport

In the Traffic Sources Menu, you find how the traffic comes to your site like (a) Percentage of Direct Traffic; (b) Percentage of Referring Sites; and (c) Percentage of Search Engines.

In the Content Menu, you can find out which of your pages are attracting most users. This will give you an idea of what the visitors like or want, which in turn helps the webmaster/blogger to pay more attention to such topics/type of presentations.
Google Analytics uses graphs, pie charts and geo maps to present data which makes it easier to understand and appreciate the data.

This is only a gist. For fully realizing the potential of Google Analytics, I suggest you personally visit it and see for yourself the various interesting features it presents. I might have some of the things that may of interest to you. I have given the URL above. That is all for today. See you tomorrow. Bye!

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