Google® Power Tools Bible

Chapter 36. Making Decisions with Google Analytics

<feature><title>In This Chapter</title>

• Creating a Google Analytics account

• Configuring your Web site for analysis

• Setting goals to achieve

• Focusing your Analytics data using filters

• Seeing the Analytics results

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The best way to know what’s happening on your Web site is to analyze the information Google makes available to you through the Google Analytics product. You can learn important information about how people are using your Web site and see what pages they visit and for how long and what they are doing on those pages. You no longer have to rely on endless Web server log files and meaningless hit counters.

Google purchased an expensive product in 2005 and, like so many other of its products, made it freely available. With Google Analytics, you can find out how well your AdWords are working to bring people to your site.

Cross-Ref

See Chapter 34 for more about AdWords.

Understanding the Basics

By adding a small amount of Javascript code to each of the Web pages you want analyzed, Google can track statistics about visits to those Web pages. The statistics are stored on the Google Analytics site indefinitely for your analysis using the Google Analytics tools. The following information is sent to Google about the page visit:

• The IP address of the computer visiting your page, which is important for information about the geographic location of the user

• The Web browser the visitor is using: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, AOL, and ...