6 Google Analytics Secrets
17 November, 2007 - Blogging - 16 Comments
Google Analytics is a fascinating piece of software. Since November 2005 it has dominated the free stats market and has done so with good reason! On the surface, the software is nothing short of excellent, but it’s once you take a little time to delve deeper that the true potential of this bloggers best friend is revealed.
After my recent StumbleUpon research and analysis, I found several features within Google Analytics that I never knew existed. It was time to do some research to find out what Analytics really offered. This article is a culmination of that research.
The 6 Google Analytics Secrets - Summary
#1 - Track Outbound Clicks - View My Info - View Google Help Center Info
#2 - Compare Dates - View My Info - View Google Help Center Info
#3 - Where Your Visitors Move to and from - View My Info - View Google Help Center Info
#4 - Create Your Own Stats - View My Info - View Google Help Center Info
#5 - Remove Yourself from Your Stats - View My Info - View Google Help Center Info
#6 - Receive Stats Via Scheduled Email - View My Info - View Google Help Center Info
The 6 Google Analytics Secrets - The Long Version
#1 - Track Outbound Clicks - View Google Help Center Info
Whether you need to track how many people click your RSS subscription link, find out how many people click your advertiser banners or track how many times a file has been downloaded, Analytics’ ability to track outbound link clicks can help.
Add the onClick event to any link you wish to track. It’s good practice to use “/outgoing” at the start of the name. By doing so, you can easily track your outbound links.
Once you have added the code to your outbound links, how do you view the stats? Simple.
- Login to Analytics and click the “Content” link in the left sidebar
- Click “Content Drilldown”
- If you have had any outbound clicks, you will see a link called “outgoing/” in the URL column. You may need to use the “Find URL:” search feature at the bottom of the table to find the “outgoing/” link
- Click “outgoing/”. You should now see a break down of each outbound link that has been clicked
Click the photo to the right for screenshots of this process.
You can even track clicks of Flash items, such as Flash banners.
I’m hoping somebody will release a WordPress plugin that allows us to easily insert Analytics outbound tracking to links. A simple plugin that generates the code automatically after allowing us to enter the link name in a form would be ideal! If there are any WordPress gurus reading, please consider this as your next plugin!
#2 - Compare Dates - View Google Help Center Info
Being able to compare one day of the week to the same day last week would be invaluable. Luckily, Analytics gives us this ability. We can narrow down our stats to specific days of the week, as opposed to dates. If you want to compare this Wednesday’s traffic to Wednesday of last week, here is how to do it:
- Login to Analytics and click the dates at the top right to open the calendar
- Select your first date, in this case Wednesday 14th
- Check the “Compare to Past” checkbox
- Click your second date, in this case Wednesday 7th
- Click “Apply Range”
You will now notice that everything is compared against the two dates. You can see in percentages and raw figures how much your demographics changed this Wednesday compared to last Wednesday. We can even compare date ranges in the same way, so we can compare this week to last week.
You can even compare traffic sources. Want to know how many visitors StumbleUpon sent you this week compare to last? Easy! Just compare the two date ranges and enter the Traffic Sources area.
#3 - Where Your Visitors Move to and from - View Google Help Center Info
Finding out which Web site or search engine your visitors found you from is all well and good, but tracking those visitors as they move around your Web site is so much better. With Analytics, we can look at each page on your site and identify where visitors have come from to get to the page and gone to after visiting the page. This is called the navigational summary and can be found in the following way:
- Login to Analytics and click the ‘Content’ link in the left sidebar
- Click the “Navigational Summary” link at the right side
- Choose your page from the “Content” drop down menu below the graph, then use the data to see what percentage entered your site at that page, exited your site from that page, and where other visitors came from and went to before and after viewing that page
Internet marketers spend countless hours analysing how visitors move around a Web site. With this information, they can optimise the Web site to help determine where a visitor goes to next. By analysing this data yourself, you should be able to spot trends and start optimising your site to make your visitors move where you want them to move.
#4 - Create Your Own Stats - View Google Help Center Info
Another marketers dream is the ability to collect data from their customers and have it automatically ranked and recorded. With Analytics, we can collect custom data from our Web site visitors and have it display right in our stats.
My personal favourite use of this tool is the collection of data through forms. When I launch my new blog design, I’ll include an option in my contact form for those contacting me to tell me what their profession and age is. With Analytics’ user defined stats, I can collect this information and have it automatically added to my stats. Right there I’ll have some valuable information for my advertisers. To collect data from a form, you need to use the following code (adapted to your needs, of course):
Google suggests many other uses for this feature. View their help center information for more details.
Once you have collected your data, you can view it in Analytics by going to the “User Defined” page within the “Visitors” section.
#5 - Remove Yourself from Your Stats - View Google Help Center Info
If you visit your own site each day like I do (usually while previewing new posts), you can quickly void your stats. Getting thousands of visitors each day is great, but if you don’t filter out your own visits you’re not going to get an accurate count for yourself nor your advertisers.
Using the Analytics Filters, you can exclude several things to ensure your stats are of the highest standard, but the most popular way to use the filters is to block your IP address from registering a visit or pageview in Analytics. To setup your filter, you will first need to find out your IP address. Once you know your IP, take the following steps:
- Login to Analytics
- Before you enter any of your Web site profiles, you should see a link to the “Filter Manager” under the Web site profiles table. Click this link.
- Towards the top right of the filter table, you should see a link titled “Add Filter”. Click this.
- Fill in the form, making sure to choose the correct filter type and making sure to apply the filter to the correct profiles
#6 - Received Stats Via Scheduled Email - View Google Help Center Info
Google can now send you a scheduled daily email report of your Web stats in a number of formats, including PDF and Excel
To setup the scheduled reports, perform the following steps:
- Navigate to the specific report you’d like to receive by email.
- Click the Email button below the report title.
- Select the Schedule tab.
- If you’re sending this report to others, enter their email addresses in the Send to others field. If you’re sending it to yourself, select Send to me to have it sent to your login email address.
- Edit the Subject and/or Description if desired.
- Select a Format in which to receive the report.
- If you’d like to compare the currently selected date range with either the Previous date range or with your Sitewide average, make your selection from the Comparison drop-down list.
- Choose how often you’d like to receive reports from the Schedule list.
- Click Schedule.
This is the first post in my Google Analytics series, discussing tips, tricks and secrets of the stats software that has dominated the market since November 2005. Subscribe to my RSS feed to receive future posts in this series.
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Posted on 17 November, 2007 by Jamie Harrop
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[...] teaser. My initial plan was to show you several different options based off the same theme, but the Google Analytics post that I just published has taken the best part of four hours to write, in turn taking up the time I [...]
I don’t understand why nearly any other stat software other than Analytics can tell me when an AdSense ad was clicked. My only disappointment with Analytics.
Nice summary of options.
Thanks for the commet, James.
You may find this useful: http://www.shawnhogan.com/2005/11/track-adsense-clicks-with-google-analytics.html
It’s not perfect, but it may be of use to you.
Found this article on BloggingZoom. It’s one of the best articles I’ve seen so far on BZ. Good work.
Thanks Jason. One of the best, eh? I’ll take that compliment every day of the week.
Cool. I never knew about some of them. Great post. Stumbled.
Thanks Ruchir. I appreciate you Stumbling it.
Great Post Jamie! You weren’t kidding about writing a good analytics article a few weeks ago.
Now I’ve got some setting up to do!
Dugg too!
Thanks Elliott.
Thanks for submitting to Digg too. I try to avoid submitting my own material, so I guess I was hoping one of my readers would do it. Thanks for taking it upon yourself to do that! I hope this one gets the attention I think it deserves… I’ve never had much look with Digg.
Thanks for this additional Google Analytics information
Didnt know you could track outbound links..
pretty cool stuff
Do you think you could add a print screen of the user define feature above please?
thanks
Regards
Krish
http://www.krishp.com
Hey Krish,
Thanks for commenting.
Unfortunately, the user defined stats is one feature that I only found out about last week as I was doing my research for this post. As a result, I don’t currently make use of it, so there isn’t much in there to take a screenshot of.
As soon as I start using it (once I launch my new design), I’ll be sure to add a screenshot of it, and I may make another post on the blog to show it to everybody.
Thanks for the suggestion!
Good article Jamie, I’ve been using getclicky a lot lately but I think with my newest site I’ll try analytics again with someone of the tracking methods you suggested.
Thanks Nick.
I truly can’t speak highly enough of Analytics. It takes a little time to get used to, but once you know how to use it and where everything is, it is by far the best free analytics software out there, in my opinion.
Great post - thank you! I have a filter setup to exclude my IP address but how do I know it’s REALLY excluding? Like you, I check my site everyday.
Hi Michelle. Thanks for commenting.
There are two ways I know of to find out whether an IP filter is working.
The first is to enter the Visitors > Network Location area. If you have an ISP that isn’t too popular, you might be able to determine whether the filter is working by looking at that list. Obviously if your ISP isn’t listed despite you having visited your site, your filter is working. Of course, if you use a popular ISP such as AOL, this method won’t work because several of your visitors will probably be using the same ISP.
The second way, and best way, would be setup a test page somewhere and add your Google Analytics code. Then visit that page. 24 hours later (allowing time for your visit to be logged by Analytics), you could go in to Content > Content by Title. Try to find the title of your test page. If it isn’t there then it means your filter is working. If it’s listed, then your filter isn’t working.
I hope that makes sense. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch!
Wow!!! That’s very informative. I didn’t know you can see those information using analytics. thanks.