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ABOUT GOOGLE ANALYTICS (INTRO)
DOCUMENT CONTROL
Document title About Google Analytics (Intro)
Version 1.0 Status Release Reference M1Goo-001
Author Tara Wilson Date 16 March 2009
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CONTENTS
1. About this Document ............................................................. 3
2. Getting Started with Analytics ............................................... 3
2.1. What is Analytics? ...............................................................3
2.2. How to sign-up for Analytics .................................................3
2.3. How to access Analytics .......................................................3
3. Editing your Account Settings ................................................ 5
3.1. Overview of the overview page ..............................................5
3.2. Editing the main account details ............................................5
3.3. Editing Website profiles ........................................................6
1.1.1. Goals and Funnels ................................................................... 6
1.1.2. Filters .................................................................................... 7
1.1.3. Users ................................................................................... 10
4. Viewing Reports .................................................................. 11
5. Next time... ......................................................................... 12
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1. ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT
This instruction document is the first in a series about Google analytics. It is design to give you an in-
depth introduction into using Google analytics. Each document in the series will focus on a certain
section of the Analytics
This document is an introduction to Analytics – how to get started and an overview of the main
features.
2. GETTING STARTED WITH ANALYTICS
2.1. WHAT IS ANALYTICS?
Google analytics is one of the many useful (and free) tools that Google provides for the use of anyone
who wants their online business to thrive and grow. Once the analytics code is embedded in a
website, and the account is created, it offers in-depth analysis of your website, allowing you to
identify strategies that are or aren’t working, pages that are or aren’t performing well, and the best
sources for your website traffic.
There are so many tools featured within analytics that it is highly unlikely you will need to use them
all, but it is pretty safe to say that for any statistics you wish to find out about your website can be
found via analytics. You can manually monitor the site via the analytics portal, or you can have
customised report emailed to you directly for ease and efficiency.
This one of the best website analysing tools you will find on the internet.
2.2. HOW TO SIGN-UP FOR ANALYTICS
To use analytics, you will first need to have a Google account set up. To set one up, go here:
https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount
and enter your details.
Then, create your analytics account here:
http://www.google.com/analytics/sign_up.html
You will be given a piece of code which will need to be embedded in every page on your website that
you wish to record data for. You may need to contact your website administrator in order to do this,
but once the code is in place, it will start recording all kinds of statistics for you.
2.3. HOW TO ACCESS ANALYTICS
Once your account is all set up and connected to your website, you can start reviewing and comparing
your data.
Sign into your account here:
http://www.google.com/analytics/
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and click the button on the right-hand side of the screen.
This will take you through to the main analytics overview for your account which will display a list of
profiles. If you have just set up the account, you will only have one profile displayed here:
N.B. Notice the STATUS column: it displays a green tick in this image. Other icons are:
RECIEVING DATA – everything is working as it should
WAITING FOR DATA – the code has been detected but the data has not fully been
drawn into reports yet
TRACKING UNKNOWN / NOT VERIFIED – it is likely that the code as not been
installed in the homepage properly
From this page you have all the tools you need available. You have links to edit your account settings,
manager the users you allow to view and also manage your data, add new websites, view your data
and more.
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3. EDITING YOUR ACCOUNT SETTINGS
3.1. OVERVIEW OF THE OVERVIEW PAGE
This is the overview page, as seen in section 2.3:
The next section outlines the main links in this page and how to edit the settings of your account.
3.2. EDITING THE MAIN ACCOUNT DETAILS
To edit the name of the Account, delete the account or change your Data Sharing settings, click “Edit
account settings.
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GOALS FILTERS USERS
3.3. EDITING WEBSITE PROFILES
The main settings for the website profile in your account are:
To reach these, you can click edit next to the website profile which takes you through to view your
current settings for all three. Filters and users can also be reached by clicking on the appropriate link
directly underneath the list of website profiles.
1.1.1. GOALS AND FUNNELS
A goal can be almost any page, or action on a page, which serves some important purpose for your
business. It is somewhere you want your visitors to be. Within analytics, you can set up (up to 4) goals
in order to record the number of visitors that actually reached this point.
You can also set a desired path for a visitor to take through your website in order to reach this goal.
When viewing your analytics report, you can see this path as a funnel as it shows you how many
people followed the path and where visitors strayed from the preferred path. This can be a useful tool
in pinpointing a page with poor usability or irrelevant text which is losing you custom. Then you can
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combat this and help to funnel more and more visitors through your site to the best point of
conversion.
1.1.2. FILTERS
Using filters are a good way of helping to accurately record the actual number of visitors to your site
as they filter out the visits you do not wish to record.
For example, if you visit you and others at your company visit your site regularly, your analytics
reports will show you far increased numbers of customers to the site as they will also record those
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non-interest visits from employees. If you then analyse this data, the results will not be entirely true
to the visitors to the site. The best way to get around this is by using filters.
If you wish to create multiple of the same type of filter, i.e. Exclude all traffic from an IP address, this
can be achieved by either creating multiple filters, or by typing in multiple IP addresses into the IP
address box and separating each one by a “|”
REGULAR EXPRESSIONS
When typing in domains or IP addresses into the correct box when creating a filter, an important
point to be aware of is that it uses regular expressions, and if you wish to use an actual character
instead of the regular expression, you will need to use the escape character “\”. The most common
use for this is when using the dot (“.”) as part of a domain or IP address.
I.e. if wanting to exclude all traffic from the IP address 165.212.13.2, you will need to type in:
165\.212\.13\.2
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N.B. There are four types of regular expression characters you will need to be aware of for use with
filters in Google Analytics:
WILDCARDS
Substitutes for any single character (letter, number or symbol) – a little bit like a blank tile in
scrabble
Placed after any character, this will match zero or more of that character in place of the star
The same as the star (*), but this must match at least one of the previous character, never zero
Carrying on the same idea as the star (*) and plus(+), this matches either one or zero of the
pervious character
This acts as an “or”
ANCHORS
Put in front of a string of characters, this defines that that string of characters must be at the
beginning of the field
Put at the end of a string of characters, this defines that that string of characters much be at
the end of its field
GROUPING
You can create a non-default item grouping which will match exactly what is in the brackets
Characters entered in square brackets will match any items including the characters placed in
the brackets – in any order
The dash can be used with the square brackets ([]) in order to increase the length of the
characters with the brackets, while typing the least possible
OTHER
This is an escape character. Placed in front of any of the regular expression characters listed
above, the actual character will be evaluated rather than the regular expression function
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1.1.3. USERS
Managing your users that are allowed access to your analytics data is easy. The only possible
drawback of this is that all users must have a valid Google Account (see section 2.2 for details of
setting up an account).
ADDING A USER FOR A WEBSITE PROFILE
Navigate to the list of users for a certain website profile by clicking on the Edit button next to the
appropriate website profile in the account overview. Then scroll down until you see the current list of
users with access to the profile:
Click Add User in the top right-hand corner of this box to take you through to set up a new user.
ADDING A USER TO THE ACCOUNT AND GIVING THEM ACCESS TO MULTIPLE PROFILES
The best way to do this is to Manage Users from the account overview (underneath the list of website
profiles – see image in section 3.3). From here, you can click Add User at the top right-hand corner of
the existing user list and go through to add a user and give them permission to existing website
profiles.
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N.B. Giving users access like this is only necessary if you want to give them “View Reports Only”
access to profiles. If you make a user an Administrator, they will be able to view and edit the settings
for all website profiles which are set up within your account
4. VIEWING REPORTS
To view the collected data for a website profile, you need to click View Report for the profile from
within the account overview:
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This will take you though to a page which looks like this:
5. NEXT TIME...
Look forward to instructions on getting your data out of the report and making the
most of the analytical tools available to you in the next document.