Performance Marketing with Google™ Analytics: Practical Strategies for Maximizing Online ROI

Chapter 4. Understanding How Google Analytics Works

IN THIS CHAPTER

• How Data Is Collected

• How Data Is Processed

• Accounts and Profiles: Data Organization

• Generating Reports

Understanding how to use Google Analytics requires a solid understanding of how Google Analytics works. So first we'll describe how data is collected and processed to give you that grounding before we explain what each report means and show you how to analyze the data.

Don't worry if you're not a programmer or a nerd. This section, like most sections in this book, is geared toward marketing professionals. We're not going to overcomplicate this objective! If you still haven't created your Google Analytics Account or logged into your reports, don't worry. We'll show you how later on. Explaining how Google Analytics works is all about process. There are three fundamental processes that work together to create all the reports in Google Analytics.

The first process is data collection, or how Google collects data about your Web site traffic and sends it back to Google's Analytics servers. The second is data processing, which is how Google turns the raw data collected during data processing into reports. The third process is report generation. Reports are generated in real time, every time you view a report in your browser.

How Data Is Collected

Google Analytics, like many Web analytics tools today, uses a technology called a page tag to track Web site traffic. A page tag is a small piece of JavaScript code that is placed on ...