Tutorial No: 5

Title: Study of Google Analytics

Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed
statistics about the visitors to a website. The product is aimed at marketers as opposed to
webmasters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics originally grew. It is the
most widely used website statistics service, currently in use at around 57% of the 10,000 most
popular websites. Another market share analysis claims that Google Analytics is used at around
49.95% of the top 1,000,000 websites (as currently ranked by Alexa).Google Analytics can track
visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks,
e-mail marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.

Integrated with Ad Words, users can review online campaigns by tracking landing page quality
and conversions (goals). Goals might include sales, lead generation, viewing a specific page, or
downloading a particular file. These can also be monetized. By using Google Analytics,
marketers can determine which ads are performing, and which are not, providing the information
to optimize or cull campaigns. Google Analytics’ approach is to show high level dashboard-type
data for the casual user, and more in-depth data further into the report set. Through the use of GA
analysis, poor performing pages can be identified using techniques such as funnel visualization,
where visitors came from (referrers), how long they stayed and their geographical position. It
also provides more advanced features, including custom visitor segmentation.

Users can officially add up to 50 site profiles. Each profile generally corresponds to one website.
It is limited to sites which have a traffic of fewer than 5 million page views per month (roughly 2
page views per second), unless the site is linked to an Ad Words campaign.

Benefits of Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool that you can used to track information about the way
visitors to your site interact with it. During a search engine optimization campaign, you will need
to use Google Analytics to track the performance of your keywords in order to have a successful
campaign. You will be able to know how much traffic each of the keyword brings to your
website. Google Analytics will open up a world of information you probably never knew about
visitors on your site.Here are some benefits of using Google Analytics during an optimization
campaign:

1. It is completely free of charge.

Although it is a free tool, but it still offer just as much or even more functionalities when
compared to other paying tools.
2. Able to find out how your visitors locate your website.

Other than the core set of keywords that you are optimizing, you will also be able to find
out what other keywords your visitors type in to find your website. During the initial
optimization campaign, the number of keywords may be little. But as time goes by, you will start
getting more keywords being listed on organic listings, due to your overall optimization effort.

3. Able to identify which pages and links your visitors click the most.

You will be able to know which are the popular pages and links, and measure whether
your optimization campaign is directing the traffic to the correct pages.

4. Visitor segmentation.

With this, you will be able to know how many new visitors that your search engine
optimization campaign brings to you. You can segment your analytic result by new/returning
visitors, geography and referral sources.

5. Able to fine tune your website.

With this analytic report, you will be able to fine tune your website, and do a new
copywriting on any page that is not converting well. In the end, it will bring you more quality
prospects, and thus gaining more customers in the near future.

Technology Used:
Google Analytics is implemented by including what is known as a "page tag". This is referred to
as the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) and is a hidden snippet of JavaScript code that
the user adds onto every page of his or her website. This code acts as a beacon, collecting private
visitor data and sending it back to Google data collection servers for processing. This is
accomplished by making a request for a specific image on Google's servers encoded with the
page and user data. Data processing takes place hourly, though it can be 3–4 hours in arrears of
real time. However, a comment on a web analytics blog from a Google employee indicates that
not all data is processed for approximately 12 hours after collection.

To function, the GATC loads a larger file from the Google web server and then sets variables
with the user's account number. The larger file (currently known as ga.js) is typically 18 KB in
size and is only downloaded once at the start of the visit as it will be cached throughout the
session. As all websites that implement GA with the ga.js code are using the same master file
from Google, a visitor that has previously visited any other website with this code implemented,
will also have the file cached on their machine. The result is that the page overhead of including
the GATC on web pages is kept to a minimum. In addition to "broadcasting information to
Google servers", the GATC sets first party cookies on each visitor's computer. This is used to
store anonymous information such as whether the visitor has been to the site before (new or
returning visitor), what is the timestamp of the current visit and what was the referrer site or
campaign the visitor came from e.g. search engine, keywords, banner or email.

Limitations of Google Analytics:

1. Data re-processing

e.g. if you change or add filters it will only affect data going forward and will not be
applied retroactively.

2. Real time tracking

Google Analytics generally updates your reports every 24 hours. It is not a huge
drawback but in some cases when you update your website daily that might be an issue. From
my own experience I can see that Google Analytics usually updates the reports every few hours.

3. Import non Ad Words data

Currently, Google Analytics only enables to import cost data for ROI analysis from
Google Ad Words.

4. Bid management

Only important when you spend a lot on PPC.

5. Ad hoc reporting

Need a bespoke report? Google Analytics can’t do it for you. This is a major limitation.
In case you run a bigger site sooner or later you’ll be in a situation where you need to customize
your reports.

6. Heat maps

Site overlay report is not entirely accurate and doesn’t provide heat maps.

7. Not integrated into Ad Sense

If you are running Ad Sense bare in mind that Google doesn’t allow users to track clicks
automatically. There are JavaScript hacs available that let you to do that though.

8. Transfer account

Currently, it is not possible to transfer profiles or account ownership to another account.

9. Change time zone when linked with Ad Words

 If your Google Analytics account is linked with Ad Words then Google Analytics will
use time zone settings from Ad Words. These cannot be changed though and you need to contact
Google to unlink the account first, which might be a nuisance.

10. Attribute the first touch to a conversion

Google Analytics will attribute the most recent campaign information to a conversion.
This behavior can be modified but requires addition of a tracking code and cannot be changed
across the whole site. There are some hacks available but it should be a standard feature.

11. Lack of support

Yes there is Help center, however, if your question is not answered there chances that
you get any information from Google are slim. You can either hire someone/train in-house, do it
yourself or hire one of the GAACs (Google Analytics Authorized Consuntant).