In the world of web analytics, there’s no doubt that Google ultimately secures the top spot. Google’s own web analytics, the Google Analytics, is a service offered by Google which generates detailed statistics about the traffic and traffic sources of a website inclusing measuring conversions and sales.
Since it is a free tool, users such as marketers are encouraged to use it as a means of tracking who their website visitors are, know where they came from and find what are they searching that lead them to the marketers site. Along with its ease of use, marketers that have basics in web trafficking can manipulate Google Analytics without the help of a webmaster. It has a very comprehensive interface that is easy to navigate.
Google Analytics’ approach is to show a sophisticated dashboard-type data for the casual marketers. A dashboard is an easy to read real-time user interface, showing a graphical presentation of the current status of your website traffic and its historical trends. It can also contain indicators on the sites’ key performance to enable instantaneous and informed decision-making.
For premium users, a more comprehensive data for the report set is provided. The generated analysis can then be used to identify poorly performing pages with techniques such as funnel visualization of where the visitors came from, how long they stayed in a certain page and their geographical position. It also provides more advanced features not limited to custom visitor segmentation.
At the advent of Google Analytic’s rise, tasks that marketers spend for days are converted into hours. And this can be improved if the dashboard is organized by the user furthermore. Since information is flowing in real-time, time won’t be a hindrance that even if there’s a lot of information to check, monitor, and create an action for, your fingers can still keep up with the pace.
With the massive size and influence of Google’s services, Google Analytics is able to track all visitors from all referrers together with search engines, social media sites, direct visits and other referring sites. It also displays advertisements, pay-per-click networks, email marketing and digital collateral. You can pre-select these features in your profile settings.
Google Analytics follow a Javascript code for its tracking, using the concepts of “page tags”. Page tags are words or few phrases present in your site’s articles that will represent your site in the search engines. The concept of adding tags is in the core of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Coupled with Google’s innovative networks across the globe, Google Analytics has became a worldwide phenomenon.
Google Analytics is not only limited to website trafficking. It can also be used to build custom applications such as reporting tools Most of these applications are found on your smartphones where games and other apps are free with the presence of an advertisement. The Mobile Package contains server-side tracking codes that use PHP, JavaServer Pages, ASP.NET, or Perl for its server-side language.
To be able to use Google Analytics accurately, cookies generated by it must be allowed. A cookie, also known as HTTP cookie, web cookie or browser cookie, is a small piece of data sent from a website and is stored in a user’s web browsing history while they are surfing the internet. With it, every time the user opens the site, the browser sends the cookie back to the server, thus allowing Google Analytics to record useful information needed in its analysis. Cookies are designed to be reliable mechanisms for websites to remember pertinent information such as location, preferences of visitors or simply users’ browsing activity.
Any individual web user can block or delete cookies resulting in the data loss of those visits for Google Analytics users. With it, website owners are advised to encourage their visitors not to disable cookies. For example, site owners can make a privacy policy statement so that the visitors will be comfortable of the thought about enabling cookies while using the site.
You can visit the official Google Analytics site here.
