Google Analytics – Day 1

Google Analytics – Day 1

I have data! I have visitors (well, not that many – but heck, I expected zero)!
Some people have found my blog via web searches. However, I was disappointed with the posting they found. I must pay closer attention to the title to content relationship, as well as, keyword usage.

On to the Analytics Report:
As a very new user to Google Analytics, I was amazed at the level of detail available in the reports and dashboard. Reports covered many areas like the pages visitors entered and existed on. Time on site/page is great information as it really lets you know if they are reading the content you are posting. I saw the keywords visitors used on the search engines that brought them to the site. Geographic, browser, network provider, new visitor vs returning visitor, even connection speed was all in the reports. It has the ability to track sale conversions, site searches, just about anything/everything you can think up. I have have used Hitbox for a long time and I think Google’s product is as strong a contender for entry to mid-tier web analytics market space.

It did take me a bit of time to write filters to exclude my access from the reports. It took a little time searching to locate the correct information. I found detailed information to create the exclusions based on IP address ranges or based on a cookie. I believe this would be a fairly common request and I was surprised that it was not prominent in the help section of the site.

I wanted to find out if newly created filters were retrospective. After a short time testing , later confirmed via the Google help section, I confirmed that filters are not retrospective. The filters are processed against the data as it is received by Google Analytics. This was a bit of a disappointment but I can understand why.

Overall – I must say that I am pleased with the service. It is a winner in my book.

The links below are to my other posting about Google’s applications and services.

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