1. June 11 & 12, 2012
Shannon Scanlan
Business Services Librarian
sscanlan@ahml.info

2. What is Google Analytics?
 Free service offered by Google
 Compiles statistical data on website visitors
 Visitors can be tracked from search engines,
advertising, email and more
 Users embed a “tracking code” on the pages or
template of their websites
 Used by more than half of the most popular websites
on the Internet (source: Wikipedia)

3. Types of Data Include:
 Audience
 Demographics
 Behavior
 Technology
 Mobile
 Custom
 Advertising
 Traffic Sources
 Content
 Social (Facebook, LinkedIn, Goodreads)

4. What Can Google Analytics Tell You?
 Am I creating relevant content on my website?
 How are visitors using my website?
 Is my email marketing working?
 What AdWords are working?
 The search terms visitors are using to find your site.
 Geographically where are visitors to your site from?
 What sources are referring visitors to your site?

5. What Google Does Not Do
 Share personal visitor information such as IP address
 Share information with 3rd parties
 Magically generate traffic to your website

6. Getting Started
 Create a Google Analytics account or
 Use an existing Google or AdWords account
 Create a profile for the website you want to track
 Link your Google Analytics account to an existing
AdWords account if you have one
 Google Analytics will create an unique code
 The code must be embedded into your website
template (Wordpress, Blogger) or into the code for
each page of your website

7. Creating Goals for Your Website
 Goals can be created for:
 URL destination
 About page, Contact Us page, Newsletter page, receipt page
 Time on site
 Time visitors spend on your pages, defined as more or less
 Pages/visit
 How many pages of your site to visitors visit
 Event
 Visitors download a PDF or watch a video

8. Track Your Traffic Sources
 Direct
 URL, bookmark
 Referring
 Ads, blog links, social media
 Search
 Google, Bing, Yahoo
 Organic (free)
 CPC (cost per click, paid advertising)
 Campaigns (Feed)

9. Audience
 How many visitors to your site
 Can select a specific date range
 New vs. returning
 Frequency of returning visitors (content relevancy?)
 Average time on site
 Bounce rate (did they stay or leave the site?)
 Country/city
 Browser, Operating System, Service Provider
 Mobile operating system, service provider, screen resolution
 Language
 Many visitors from France? Maybe you need a French language
version of your website.

10. Location
 What country and city are your website visitors coming
from?
 How many new visitors?
 How long are they staying on your site?
 Can you target your online or print advertising to hit
geographic markets that are visiting your site?
 What source is sending your visitors to your site from their
location? A search engine, a URL, social media such as
LinkedIn or Facebook?
 Direct traffic can indicate how well people remember and
visit your website address.

11. Marketing
 How are people finding your site?
 What key words are they searching for?
 Did you advertise locally and did your visitors increase
in the city after the advertisement?
 Are your AdWords working?
 If you are doing a cost per click campaign on a search
engine, is it paying off?
 What sites are referring visitors to your website?
 Search Engine Optimization (SEO), what are the
keywords?

12. Compare Data by Date
 Select the data range in the upper right corner of your
dashboard
 By default it is set to 1 month (April 1-May 1)
 You can compare data to a previous date range
 April 1, 2012 to May 1, 2012 compared to
 April 1, 2011 to May 1, 2011

13. Customize Your Dashboard
 Home>Dashboard>New Dashboard
 Create a Dashboard from a blank template or a starter
template
 Add widgets for the reports most relevant to you
 As you explore the report segments click on the Add to
Dashboard link to add to your custom Dashboard

14. More on Google Analytics
 Google Analytics University
 Lynda.com video tutorials on Google Analytics
 Google Business Solutions