Can Somone Explain Google Analytics

[JessicaWhite]

My friend told me to install it on my website and I was going to download it, but I'm not totally sure how it works. I know it tracks my visitor data, but should I be worried about security? Does it really help? I feel like such a noobie, but I would totally appreciate some input. Thnx.

[ms1958]

haven't tried that one, I've never liked anything google
statcounter.com offers a free tracker and shows page loads, unique and returning visitors, where they were referred from, where they exit to (nice for knowing if they clicked on a link at your site) and a bunch of other statistics. I also have used trafficswarm's hitslink which is free but has an upgrade to be able to see all stats. Statcounter is much better.

[JessicaWhite]

One of the things I read about Google was that you could keep track of your PPC through analytics. So like, I could see that on the $ I spent, there were a lot or only a little bit of views. Does statcoutner have a way to link to Google PPC like that?

[ms1958]

No, I don't see anything like that listed under the options in statcounter.

[ms1958]

Never used PPC's before, but just thought about this. If a PPC always comes from the same website (everyone who is clicking to go to your site comes from the same URL) statcounter lets you see what URL people are coming from. I can tell where every visitor came from with that tool, so I know what advertising sites get me the most visitors. I dunno, I'm sure google works great and I actually have both statcounter AND hitslink on my site. So, try all of them and compare

[JessicaWhite]

that is good to know. I will see how it works!

[tellmemore]

I'm an avid user of google analytics and I also use google ppc, but the only thing about google ad-words and google analytics the tracking cookie is different. Google analytics track’s one hundred twenty days vs. google ppc is thirty days so sometimes you will see discrepancies from each other so if you would like to see true picture of your google ad-words efforts just refer to your google ad-words interface. When you’re implementing the code keep your eyes peeled for the different codes; legacy code and the new code I suggest using the new code it has updates-more robust. Google analytics is good and it’s free it can track; paid searches, organic searches, keywords that a visitor type to reach you’re website for either paid or organic, what landing page the visitor converted in if your website is a e-commerce, and other bunch of segments and metrics. You can export report via pdf, xml, csv, and tsv.

Feel free to PM if you need any help.

[AffiliateLeads007]

one of the coolest features on google analytics is the map function. You can see where people visit from down to the city. Every time I log in I check it because it is so interesting.

[JessicaWhite]

ok, I've got it working. It isn't as complicated as I thought it would be. I was looking at the average time per visit and comparing it across keywords and found that some bring in deeper users than other, even though they cost less. I'm happy with it even just for this.

[tellmemore]

Cool Jessica, glad to see your able to work through it.