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The Google Key
© imutopia.com
Disclaimer: The information contained in this digital course is for
informational purposes only. The author is not liable for misuse of
the techniques taught in this product. The author does
recommend third party software/scripts to the user, but is not
liable for viruses or spyware that the user could receive when
downloading these items. It is advised to stay up to date with
computer security and to have an active and reliable
antivirus/spyware package on your machine.

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Table of Contents
Introduction
Week I: Quantitative vs. qualitative data
Tricky Data
What is testing?
Before you install Google analytics
Imutopia’s web analytics quick start method
Component A
Component B
Component C
Week II: How Google analytics Work
How the process works
Walkthrough scenario
What Google Analytics Can & Cannot Do
The old tracking: Urchin.js
Week III: Getting Google Analytics Running
Add Code

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Manually install Google analytics on wordpress
Installing Google Analytics for Mobile sites
Week IV: Tracking Madness
Week V: Sanitizing data
Create a copy of your data
Include/Exclude Filters
Search and replace filters
Lowercase/Uppercase Filters
Predefined Filters
Week VI: Tracking those Conversions
Setting up goals
Destination
Duration on Site
Pages/Screens per visit
Events
Week VII: Tracking campaigns

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How link tagging works
How to tag links
Conclusion

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Introduction
Google analytics is just a subset of a massive branch of internet
marketing known as web analytics. This is the collection and
analysis of virtual data to help improve the usability and
effectiveness of a website.
The good thing is Google analytics is one of the best tools on the
web to help with this process and as you already know, it’s one
hundred percent free. Read this guide, and then reinforce the
concepts by taking the quizzes in the online course.
Upon successful completion you’ll be on the fast track to
mastering web analytics.

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Week I: Quantitative vs. qualitative data
Quantitative data deals with numbers or more explicitly attributes
that can be measured. Web analytic software such as Google
Analytics, Yahoo web analytics, and Piwik all measure this. In
order to measure this type of data you need to be generating
traffic to your site.
However, while quantitative data is very useful, you must also
collect another type of data called qualitative data. This deals
with attributes that can be observed.
Qualitative data is not easily retrieved by analytic software, so
the best way to analyze it is to conduct some type of survey. You
can ask your web visitors simple short questions so that you can
gain a greater insight into why they came to your site.
Sample questions that you could ask include:
 Why did you visit my site today?
 Are you looking for something?
 How can I assist you?
There are several opensource surveying tools on the market, but
the one I recommend is limesurvey in which you can download
here: http://www.limesurvey.org/.
Since its opensource you will have access to the source code
which means you can code additional features into it if needed.
Also, the program is very simple to use and you can ask a
multitude of questions with it.

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All you need to get started with this program is a webhost that
supports php 5.0+ and MySQL.
Tricky Data
Collecting data is great, but data by itself is not useful to your
business. As a webmaster you must collect data, dissect/analyze
it, and then use insights to improve your internet business.
However, the process in which you analyze data is tricky because
data doesn’t speak to you.
For example, let’s say you have 2000 visitors come to your
landing page, and only 5 opt in to receive your free report. You
thought you had good advertising copy, a professionally designed
landing page, a quality free report, and good quality traffic to
your site.
With all of these positive variables you had its difficult to imagine
what went wrong with your campaign. However, after carefully
analyzing your data the only reasonable conclusion that you can
draw is that not many people are interested in learning how to
collect Cicadas!
Having lots of data can be deceptive to the beginner because
data doesn’t necessary lead to obvious answers.
So the next question you may be wondering is how the heck I
know what is causing me to not reach my goals of 10,000
subscribers, or ebook sales of 100 units per month. Well, the
answer to the burning issue is to test.
What is testing?

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Testing is the process that marketers use to diagnosis problems
with their site. They do this through an iterative process of
proposing possible solutions to their problems and then tracking
the results that they generate.
I conducted a survey asking customers why or why not do they
engage in testing. I didn’t find it too surprising that an
overwhelming amount of webmasters responded that they do not
test because they thought:
 it wasn’t economical
 required high level marketing skills
 consumes too much time
However, these reasons are not true and it’s important that
webmasters start testing their marketing efforts as this is the
singe handily fastest method to improving their business.
No worries, I’ll show you to effectively test your website using
Google analytics in the future sections.
Before you install Google analytics
Before you install Google analytics I want you to think about
where your current business stands and where you are trying to
take it. The reason I’m saying this is because many webmasters
simply install Google analytics and view some of the metrics such
as unique visitors and referrals, and then think that they are
conducting effective web analytics.

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However, the truth is that’s only a fraction of the tasks that you
should be doing in order to augment your online business with
analytics.
So right now don’t even worry about installing Google analytics
on your site. What you should be doing is implementing the
Imutopia’s web analytics quick start method.
Imutopia’s web analytics quick start method
Since web analytics is a tricky field my job is to demystify it for
webmasters and make the entire process simple, fun, and most
importantly, rewarding for your internet business.
That’s why I devised a simple process that will help break you
into the world of analytics which is indicated in the screenshot
below:
I’ll briefly summarize each of these components.
Component A: Collect business goals:
The main purpose of web analytics is to augment your website
which will result in higher revenue. So since this is the end goal

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of web analytics, you should make a note of how you will
accomplish this in the beginning stages.
What type of website do you have? How did you plan on
increasing the revenue to your site? How are you planning to
generate revenue, and how much traffic do you plan to generate
in a six month duration? Below is a sample business goal set by
webmaster Jane:
I’m the owner of a website called cookiecutterrecipes.com. I sell
an ebook that provide users with tips on how they can make their
own professional looking cookies using cookie cutters that you
can easily assemble from everyday household items. The ebook
will be priced at $19.95, and it includes a onetime offer for
$39.95. I plan to generate $100,000 in a six month duration so I
need to sell a minimum of 5000 frontend units or roughly 833
units monthly. I will accomplish this by providing my visitors with
a large collection of free downloadable items that they will have a
strong interest in and then upsell them my products via email.
In the early stages your goals will not look very descriptive, but
the important thing is to just get something down as you can
always add more detail to them in the future.
Component B: Analyze website structure
You need to figure out the architecture of your website because
knowing this will make it easy for you to implement Google
analytics on your site.
Do you utilize blogging software like Wordpress, or a content
management system like Joomla, Drupal, or silverstripe? If not,
then do the site you’re using come in a web template system?

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It’s important to know this because if your site comes in a
template system then all you need to do is add the Google
analytics code within the footer file of your site and that’s it.
However, if you developed a homemade static site then you will
need to add the analytic code on each page of your site. I will
explain how Google analytics works in the next chapter.
Component C: Create a Google Analytics Account
Once the first two components are finished then the remaining
component is very simple. Go ahead and create your Google
analytics account by visiting the url here:
http://www.google.com/analytics/.
If you have a partner in your internet business then create an
account for them and have the profile setup so that they receive
automatic reports.
You don’t need to worry about integrating GA with your site in
this stage; you just want to create the accounts.

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Week II: How Google analytics Work
Believe it or not, understanding how Google analytics work is
critical to understanding the advance features of this web app.
Many web users think that GA is simply a script that JUST collects
data which is far from the truth.
You’ll learn how GA collect, store, and process data. You will also
learn about some of the limitations that GA has which is also very
important so that you don’t worry about things that you have no
control of.
How the process works
I will first provide a textual explanation of what happens when a
visitor comes to your site and then I will follow up by providing a
graphical representation. Below I will use “Bob” to denote an
arbitrary site visitor.
Walkthrough scenario:
Bob visits a site called “imaginary” that has the Google Analytics
Tracking Code (GATC) on it. When this happens the GATC will
instantly make a request to ga.js.
This is the king file of Google analytics. The GATC is just a pawn
file that sets up your GA account, but ga.js is the master file in
which all of the magic happens.
Once Bob comes to website imaginary gs.js will be downloaded to
Bob’s computer. This file will only be downloaded once because it
will be stored in the browser’s cache thus making re-downloading
it unnecessary.

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This is beneficial because it reduces redundancy and makes
accessing website imaginary quicker which was a previously
known drawback to Google analytics.
Once Bob’s computer download ga.js, Bob is all primed to be
tracked. Several cookies will be made that will track several
pieces of data such as what browser Bob is using, where he is
located, and what language he reads.
All of this information is collected so that GA can build an
accurate “virtual profile” of Bob which will aid in analytics. Next, a
page view is computed once GATC sends this data to the Google
analytic server by calling a small 1x1 gif file called _utm.gif.
Bob actions or events on imaginary can be tracked using this
method. For example, if Bob downloads a pdf file from a page on
imaginary then his download can be tracked using this process.
Last, Google will periodically collect new data and update your
analytics report. Even though Google boasts that it does real time
reporting, the only accurate reports are the ones that are done at
the end of the day.
Below is an illustration that shows the basic process of how
Google analytics work:

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The Limitations of Google Analytics
Like with all software there are limitations that GA faces. Since
GA uses JavaScript then all a web user needs to do is disable
javascript in their browser to prevent GA from tracking them.
All the major browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet
Explorer, and Safari come with this feature so some of your data
could be skewed as a result of this.
In addition, what will cause the biggest hole of inaccuracy is
users deleting or blocking the GA cookies which will lead to data
loss.
As mentioned previously GA utilizes cookies to set and track data,
and without it no data will get analyzed. Unfortunately, this is a
primary issue for any web analytic software that utilizes page
tags.
One solution is to explain in your privacy policy on why your site
uses cookies, and encourage your visitors to not block the Google
analytic cookie as it will skew your site’s data.

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In addition, another limitation that Google analytics face is data
retention. Even though Google is a hyper successful billion dollar
company, it still cannot give unlimited resources to webmasters.
Google servers store and fetch the analytic information to
webmasters, and the bigger and more trafficked websites
naturally consume more resources.
To counter this issue Google places a data restriction on free
accounts. For example, if your account receives more than 10
million hits monthly then there is no guarantee that those
additional hits will be processed.
To learn more about GA data limits please refer to the weekly two
reading resources that you should have received with your
download.
What Google Analytics Can & Cannot Do
By default GA comes with a good chunk of information. Below is a
list of features you’ll have access to:
 Real-Time
 Audience
 Traffic Sources
 Content
Real-Time: This allows you to look at the activity on your site as
its happening such as the traffic sources for example. This is an
ideal measuring tool for your social media marketing campaigns
or when you are executing a product launch.

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Audience: This provides a myriad of information about the
demographic of your site visitors such as language, location, new
vs. returning, frequency & regency, and engagement. It also
provides insights into other attributes such as what browser they
are using, what network visitors are accessing, mobile metrics,
and visitors flow.
Traffic sources: This is pretty self explanatory. It provides you
with the sources of traffic to your site.
Content: Provides you with the pages on your site, the site
speed, and site search.
As you can see GA by default will provide you with a lot of
information which is why beginners to web analytics don’t believe
they will need to do anything else. However, there are many
things that are important to your business that GA don’t measure
by default such as:
File downloads: Most sites these days don’t contain plain text,
they often contain text, images, audio, videos, pdfs, and an array
of many more file types. Google analytics does not track web
documents by default, but no worries I’ll show you exactly how to
do this in the future portion of this product.
User events: Google analytics by default doesn’t track events that
users take on your site. For example, a user clicking on the buy
button, or someone adding a comment are all events that are not
tracked by Google analytics by default.
Flash animation/embedded videos: If a user looks at the flash
demo of the software you are selling then by default it won’t be
tracked by Google analytics. The same thing will apply if a user
utilizes the youtube videos on your site.

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The old tracking: Urchin.js
There are actually two versions of GA. The old one uses Urchin.js,
while the new one uses ga.js. For those that is curious Urchin was
web analytic software developed by Urchin Software Corporation.
Since it was one of the most popular web analytic companies it
was acquired by Google in 2005. Google kept updating the
software and kept releasing new versions of it, but in 2012
Google discontinued Urchin for good.
However, since Google acquired Urchin the original source code
has been updated substantially. If you are new to GA then I
would of course recommend you to use the new Google analytics
platform.
However, if you have been using GA since its early days then you
are more than likely using urchin.js. If you try to update to ga.js
then you will most likely experience some technical difficulties,
especially if you have added custom attributes to your account.
If you want to mitigate to the new analytics platform then I would
recommend consulting a developer so that they can make this
process as smooth as possible.
I would also recommend looking into the analytics change log as
it includes lots of important information for developers.
Another reason why I recommend consulting a developer is
because if you mess something up during the mitigation process
your website data will be forever skewed.
This is one of the major limitations that Google analytics has,
which it lacks reprocessing.

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If you implement something incorrectly in analytics then there is
no way of undoing it so your data will have a higher marginal of
error than usual.
Week III: Getting Google Analytics Running
By now you should have already created your Google analytics
account. If you haven’t you can do so by visiting the url here:
http://www.google.com/analytics/.
As mentioned in the first section you should have already
collected your business goals and should have a clear picture on
how many accounts you need, and who will have access to the
reports.

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To enable automated email reporting is very simple. Once you
logged into Google analytics click on the Email tab across the
header which is highlighted in the screenshot below.
Upon clicking you should receive a popup window as indicated in
the screenshot below:
Below are details about each field:
From: This is who the emails will be sent from which will be
yours.
To: Indicates who you want to send the reports to. You can add
multiple email addresses in this field.
Subject: What you want the email title to say to the recipients.

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Attachments: What file type you want the reports to be sent as?
You can choose from CSV, TSV, Excel, or PDF.
Frequency: How often you want the reports sent. You can send it
one time only, weekly, daily, monthly, or quarterly.
Day of Week: Indicates what day of the week you want the
report to be initially sent on.
Advanced options: This means how long you want to have your
automated emails to last. If you want your reporting cycle to
continue indefinitely then do not mess with this option.
Once your reporting options have been configured you can go
ahead and enter in the text of your email and then click send.
Once that is done the next step is to add the GATC to your
website.
Add Code
The next step of the process is to add the GATC to your website.
However, before you do that you need to have basic webmaster
skills. You will need to know how to ftp files to your webhost, and
then edit them.
For ftping I would recommend using the opensource tool Filezilla.
If you don’t have an idea on how to ftp then watch this YouTube
video. To edit files I would recommend Notepad++ which is
another opensource program that you can download. Here is a
tutorial on how to use Notepad++.
Once you know the basics of ftping and editing files you will be
able to add the GATC to your account.

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To do this login to Google analytics, click on the admin tab, and
then click on the “Tracking info” header link as indicated in the
screenshot below:
Upon doing so you should come to a page in your account that
looks like the screenshot below:
The default code that you can copy and paste will look like this:
<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-9909944-1']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

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(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type =
'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl'
: 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
You must copy and paste this code on every page of your site you
want to track. Put this tag just before the closing </head> tag of
the page.
Also, there are several options that you can configure before you
copy the code to your site which I will explain.
Subdomains: Do you have subdomains on your site that you want
to track such as store.yoursite.com? If so then enable this option.
Multiple top-level domains: Do you have other top level domain
names like yoursite.uk, or yoursite.de? If so, enable this option.
Display Advertiser Support: This helps remarket to users that left
your site. If you want to enable this option then click on it.

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Custom campaigns: This help you discover more in depth
information about referral traffic.
Manually install Google analytics on wordpress
Contrary to popular belief you don’t need a plugin to install
Google analytics on your wordpress blog!
If you do use a plugin then you run the risk of bogging down your
site with heavy plugins that you really don’t need!
The solution is to install Google analytics by logging into your
wordpress administrator control panel. From there follow this
path on your wordpress site: Appearance->Editor->Footer.
The footer.php file would open up within your wordpress
administrative control panel.
From there you can use ctr+f to find the closing body tag of your
respective theme.
I would recommend entering the text “body” and then navigate
throughout the source code to find the snippet you’re looking for.
Above the closing body tag copy and paste your Google analytics
code as indicated in the screenshot below:

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Once your code is added, click update and then log into your
Google analytics account to see if the code has been properly
implemented.
If it was a success then you should receive the following message
highlighted in the screenshot below:
If the tracking is installed then Google analytics is easily added on
your website without the need for a plugin!
Here are some additional resources recommended by Google that
you can read up on for further education:

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http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/usingsite-
speed-in-web-search-ranking.html.
If for one reason or the other you do not wish to use this method
then you can always install the Wordpress Google Analytic plugin
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-
wordpress/.
However, I’m forewarning you that this could slow down your site
which is never good for optimization.
Installing Google Analytics for Mobile sites
Do you want to track the mobile visitors to your site? If so then
you are in business as Google analytics can make this happen.
The very first thing you must do is download the Google Analytics
server-side snippet which you can access here:
http://dl.google.com/gaformobileapps/googleanalyticsformobile.zi
p.
Once the file is downloaded to your local host, extract it and then
upload it to your webhost.
Next, extract the package for the language your mobile site is
using.
For example, if you’re using php then extract that folder. In each
folder you should see approximately two .snippet files as
highlighted in the screenshot below:

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Open up the first snippet file in notepad++ as you will need to do
some quick modifications. The field that you want to modify is
"ACCOUNT ID GOES HERE" which is highlighted in the screenshot
below:

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You need to insert your web property id here. You can get this
number by logging into your account and clicking admin as
indicated in the screenshot below:
However, make sure to replace the “UA” prefix with “MO” so that
Google analytics will know that you’re using mobile tracking.
Once that is done copy the contents of the first snippet file into
every page that you want to track above the <html> tag.
Then, copy the contents of the second snippet just before the
</body> tag of every page that you want to track.
Last but not least, copy the ga.extension file to the root directory
of your site. In this example we will copy ga.php to the root
directory of our site.
To view the data for your mobile site you simply just need to
create an analytics profile for your application, and then be
patient as generating hits can take as long as 24 hours.

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Week IV: Tracking Madness
Google analytics makes it really simple for webmasters to track
actions that happen on their site.
All they have to do is make use of a JavaScript element called
_trackPageview on a HTML tag. In other words, you’ll be able to
track the clicks on:
 Images
 Links
 Non-html files such as pdfs, ppt, doc, or zip files
For example, if I want to track how many users click on my buy
button I could add this to my site:
<img src=”/ images/buybutton.jpg’” onclick=”_gaq.push([‘_trackPageview’,
‘/images/buybutton.jpg’]);” />

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When a web visitor clicks on the above image, a page view will be
made for /images/buybutton.jpg’. In addition, you can utilize the
same method to track how many users clicked on your free pdf
report:
<a href=”/downloads/datingtips.pdf’” onclick=”_gaq.push([‘_trackPageview’,
‘tracking/ downloads/datingtips.pdf’]);” /> Free dating tips report </a>
Note, that I added an imaginary directory called “tracking”. The
reason why I did this is to make it easier to track the non-html
files that you plan on analyzing.
In addition, outbound links or links to pages that take the user
away from your site are tracked in the same manner.
<a href=”http://www.imutopia.com” onclick=”_gaq.push([‘_trackPageview’,
‘outbound/ ‘+this.href’]);” /> Imutopia site </a>
This outbound link will appear as:
/outbound/http://www.imutopia.com in your reports.
Make sure to use naming conventions that will make it easy for
you. If you make the naming conventions odd or illogical then
you will only be making your job more difficult when analyzing
data in your reports.

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Week V: Sanitizing data
Google analytics is a great tool for its price, but as mentioned
previously it’s far from perfect. Some of the issues it faces are
inaccuracy.
Compared to other analytic software like awstats, Google
analytics is far superior in accuracy because by default it doesn’t
factor bots, spiders, or crawlers into the page views.
However, even though Google patched up these data concerns
there are still gaping holes that can contribute to inaccurate data.
One main issue is that ALL web analytic programs don’t track
humans; they track computers which can lead to all sorts of
inconsistencies.
For example, multiple people may use the same computer which
makes it difficult for GA to differentiate user A from user B.

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In addition, some people may access sites from multiple
computers.
User “Joe” could access your site from his home computer, on his
mobile device at an airport, in a public library, or dare I say on
his job computer.
All of this usage will count as unique visits in GA because it will
see unique ip addresses and will assume that they are from new
visitors.
However, there are simpler ways in which data can be skewed. If
a user decides to delete their cookies and then revisit a site, then
Google analytics will jot this user as a new one even though they
are clearly a returning one.
The reason for this is because Google analytics utilize JavaScript
and cookies in order to track visitors.
In addition, if a user configures their browser to block Javascript
then this will effectively render Google analytics useless.
This means that they will be able to browse your site without GA
tracking them.
The good news is the percentage of users that will configure their
browsers to block JavaScript or cookies by default is most likely
minimum, probably less than 5%.
However, the bad news is that there is still more overlapping data
that can contribute to inaccurate metrics in your Google analytics
account!
One of the main ones is if you have workers for your company.
By workers I don’t necessarily mean someone on your payroll,

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but more on the terms of outsourcers or individuals that do work
for your internet company.
The problem you may face is that they will access your site on a
consistent basis. They may update pages, refresh their browser
to see if changes propagated, add new content, and the whole
nine yards.
This can all contribute to inaccurate data and you will want to
sanitize of filter your data so that it does not come up within your
reports.
The easiest way to mastering filters is to understand the
mechanics of how Google analytics work which was discussed in
part II of this course.
If you skipped to this section without reading part II, then please
go back and read it before continuing.
Google analytics comes with two types of filters which are
predefined and custom.
Both of these filters pretty much work in the same manner as
they both have three components:
 Filter field
 Filter pattern
 Filter type
When Google Analytics process data it will execute the filters that
have been applied to the profile.

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When a filter executes, Google analytics will compare the filter
pattern with the filter field, and if a match is recorded the filter
will execute and the data will be modified.
If no matches are found then Google analytics will process the
data as it normally does.
Below is an illustration of this process:
Create a copy of your data
Before creating any type of filter you should create a copy of your
data just in case you mess something up.
Once you apply a filter there is no way of undoing the past data!
That means if you applied a filter for an ip address on the 20th
of
this month, and you removed the filter on the 22nd
, Google
analytics will filter that ip address on the 20th
and 21st
even after
you removed it.

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To create an unfiltered profile log into your Google analytics
account and click on admin, you should see a button that states
“+ New Profile” as highlighted in the screenshot below:
From there select the “Web Site” button and enter in your
reporting profile name, reporting time zone, and then select the
“Create Profile” button as highlighted in the screenshot below.

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Once that is done you should see a new profile created for your
unfiltered data as indicated in the screenshot below:
Accessing your unfiltered profile once you log back into Google
analytics is very simple.
Upon logging in you should see a list of all of the sites in your
profile.
Your unfiltered data will be under the category in which it
replicated data from as highlighted in the screenshot below:

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Include/Exclude Filters
These are the most common filters that webmasters use, and
they are coincidentally the most popular ones.
When an include filter is executed this means that the filter will
include this data within the reports.
On the other hand, exclude filters do the exact opposite. If a
pattern matches the filter field then the piece of data will be
excluded.
What makes inclusion/exclusion filters so powerful is that they
will allow you to segment your data in a variety of ways.
One such way is that it can allow you to observe data from
specific geographic regions, so let’s get to that.
Click on the Filters header tab and then click on the “+New Filter”
button as highlighted in the screenshot below.
You should be directed to a new page in your administrative
account in which you can apply filters.

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The below screenshot is an example of a filter that will include
data from New York.
The filter fields are documented here:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034380.
Now the next question is how would you capture visitors from
New York, New Jersey, Florida, and California?
Well, the solution would not be to create a separate filter for each
state. The simplest solution would be to use the advanced
operator or (|) to solve this issue.

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The following pattern is the correct implementation: New
York|New Jersey|Florida|California. Here is how it should look in
the screenshot:
Filters work in a first come first serve basis and are executed
sequentially.
This means that the output of the first filter will be used as input
for the second and so on.
It wouldn’t make sense if you apply two separate filters to include
two different states because the output of the first filter will not
contain much data which would lead to severely inaccurate
results.

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It’s important that you learn how to use the advanced filters in
Google analytics so that you can devise regular expressions that
will provide you with the data that you are seeking.
Search and replace filters
With this filter you can replace an expression with another string.
The three things that this filter requires is a filter field, an
expression to look for, and a replace expression.
The search expression should be a regular expression while the
expression query should just be text.
To apply a search and replace filter to your profile select the
custom filter option and then select “Search and Replace.”
A sample implementation of the search and replace feature is
illustrated in the screenshot below:

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This is ideal if you have long unintelligible links that you would
like to smooth out and make easier to interpret.
An ideal site to implement this on is shopping carts.
Lowercase/Uppercase Filters
This type of filter transforms the inputted text to either all
uppercase or all lowercase.

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What separates this from the other filters is that this is the only
one that does not require a filter pattern as it only requires a
filter field as indicated in the screenshot below.
The next question you may have is when would you utilize this
filter?
You would use this depending on the web server you’re using.
Some servers like Microsoft IIS will generate page views with
mixed-case URLS.
Google analytics being case sensitive will create multiple items for
the same page in various reports which can distort your data
heavily. For example, the url

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http://www.imutopia.com/default.asp and
http://www.imutopia.com/DEFAULT.asp will both generate two
lines in the top content report which is ridiculous because they
both clearly refer to the same url.
A lowercase filter will force the filter field to be all lowercased for
consistency.
Predefined Filters
The last filter type we will discuss are the predefined filters.
The good news is that Google has made implementing predefined
filters very easy as they have limited the number of features that
the interface comes with.
Predefined filters work in a similar manner to custom filters in
that a pattern is sent to a piece of data (a field) and if a match is
recorded the field is executed.
There are currently two types of predefined filters which are
include and exclude.
In addition, unlike custom filters predefined filters only have four
fields as you can see in the screenshot below:

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Traffic from the ip addresses: This filter will neglect all traffic
coming from the ip addresses entered within the filter pattern.
This is primarily useful for excluding traffic to internal company
traffic sources. A good idea is to use Google to find your ip
address and to filter it so that your own personal visits won’t
skew your stats.
Traffic to the subdirectories: This will filter the traffic to the
subdirectories on your site. This is helpful if you want to zoom in
and focus on one section of your site.
Traffic to the hostname: Hostnames are human readable
keywords that correspond to the address of a device that
connects to a network. The domain name system (DNS) is an

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example of this. This attribute will allow you to filter the traffic to
your hostname.
Traffic from the ISP domain: ISP is the acronym for internet
service provider. To find out who your ISP provide is use this tool
here. This attribute will allow you to filter the traffic from your
ISP.
In addition to choosing a field, you will also have the option to
entering a value for Google Analytics to apply to the field. The
options that you have are:
 Equal to the pattern
 Began with
 End with
 Contain
In case you didn’t notice, there are no regular expression options
here.
Since regular expressions are complicated, Google doesn’t offer
these in the predefined filters.

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Week VI: Tracking those Conversions
Goals are the most important feature in Google analytics.
Let’s face it, if you have no goals for your business then you have
no direction and that could lead to all sorts of complications.
When you setup goals you can match your business outcomes
with your Google analytics arrangement.
There are several types of goals in Google analytics in which I will
discuss shortly.
Setting up goals
Google analytics makes it easy for you to setup goals.
First log into your account and under the conversions tab click on
“overview” as indicated in the screenshot below.

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If you haven’t setup your goals yet then you should get a
message prompting you to do so as indicated in the screenshot
below:
After clicking the “Set up goals” button you should be redirected
to a page as indicated in the screenshot below:
From there select the “create a goal” button which should look
like the snapshot below:

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You should see that there are several goal types which are:
 Destination
 Duration
 Pages/Screens per visit
 Event
I’ll show you how to utilize each one briefly.
Destination
In this goal you specify the path that you want the user to be
directed to after they complete some action.
This process could be purchasing a product, subscribing to your
newsletter, or downloading a file.

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This process should end with a thank you page which is a page
that thanks the user and then provides them with a call to action
on what to do next.
When Google analytics processes site data it will increase the goal
counter every time a goal page is viewed.
So now that you have a brief overview about the destination goal
lets learn how to create one.
The first thing you need to do is create a goal. Once that is done
name it, select destination as your type, and then click on next
step as indicated in the screenshot below:
In the destination form enter your website url as indicated in the
screenshot below:

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The other options such as value and funnel are optional. If you
want to assign a monetary value to your goal then do so by
clicking on the value button.
I would recommend setting the value to the price of the product
you’re selling. In addition, if you have an upsell or downsell then
you can specify the url that your visitors should be taken to by
clicking on the funnel button.
Once you’re done click on the “Create Goal” button and you
should see your goal listed as indicated in the screenshot below:

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Duration on Site
The visitor’s duration goal is when a visitor remains on your site
for a certain period of time.
This is useful because it can help you analyze how your web
visitors are utilizing your content.
Setting up this goal is very simple. Enter in your goal name and
click next as indicated in the screenshot below:
From here all you have to do is specify the minimum duration in
which the user must remain on your site in order for the goal to
be recorded as indicated in the screenshot below:

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Once you have entered in a duration select the “Create Goal”
button and this goal will now be tracked by Google analytics.
Pages/Screens per visit
This is similar to the site goal because page view goals are
generated once a user reached a certain number.
You may want to track such a goal to test if you have the optimal
layout for your site.
Perhaps you want your web visitors to check out several other
pages on your site after they visited your homepage.
Tracking this goal is an excellent way to analyze if the current
layout of your site is meeting your requirements.

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To get started with tracking this goal click on the “create a goal”
button, enter in a goal name, and then select “pages/Screens
per visit” as indicated in the screenshot below:
From here all you need to do is enter the number of pages that a
user must generate in order to trigger the goal as indicated in the
screenshot below:

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Once you are done select “Create Goal” and you should see your
goal listed in the Google user interface.
Events
This is the last type of goal that you can create in Google
analytics and requires a little bit more work but is worth it.
I previously showed you how to track events using the
_trackPageview methods.
The only clear difference between the two are that setting up goal
events will show up in the event reports while using the
_trackPageview will not.

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Week VII: Tracking campaigns
An often overlooked feature of Google analytics is the ability to
track external marketing campaigns like emails for example.
The good news is Google analytics has a feature that allows you
to easily accomplish this.
However, what makes this different from other configuration
steps is that you don’t configure anything within Google analytics
or on your site.
You instead can utilize a url builder that Google analytics makes
available to the public which I will discuss shortly.
By default Google analytics offer three referral segments which
are:
 Search engines
 Referral
 Direct
While this is useful information one loophole is that it doesn’t
track paid advertising methods.
It is crucial that you measure this so that you will have a clear
picture on what’s making you money and what’s not.
How link tagging works
Tagging a link means adding additional info to the destination urls
in your ads.

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The extra information is known as query string parameters that
describe what the marketing activity is about.
Below is an illustration of how link tagging works:
In the first step the visitor will see your banner ad. When the user
clicks on the link they will then be directed to the destination url.
Embedded within the url are additional query-string parameters
that Google analytics make use of in order to identify the ad.

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When the user arrives on the destination url the _trackPageview()
method will be executed which analyzes the url in the browser
and then extract the parameters of the query.
Once that is done the parameters will be stored in a cookie which
will track any actions by the user.
Below are the descriptions about what each parameter
represents:
Utm_campaign: This can be the name for the entire scope of your
marketing campaign. For example, purchasing advertising from
online networks, collecting subscribers, and sending out an email
blast could all be part of one marketing campaign.
Utm_medium: This corresponds to how the message is sent to
the user. Some examples could be email, online forum, ppc, and
banner.
Utm_source: This is synonymous with whom you are teaming up
with to distribute your site. If you are purchasing ads then this
will be where the ads will be displayed. For example Google,
Yahoo/Bing, or AdBrite.
Utm_term: This is the search or keyword term the user inputted
into the search engine.
Utm_content: The version of the ad you’re using. You can use
two ads in order to conduct an A/B spilt test.
How to tag links
Tagging links is pretty straightforward if you think things out
beforehand.

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First, try and think of all of the query-string parameters that you
will need to use in your marketing campaign such as the
campaign, medium, source, and possible keyword and content
values.
If you have several links that you want to tag then I would highly
recommend using Google spreadsheets just in case you need to
share this with anyone.
Once you have indentified what query-string parameters you will
use you will then need to incorporate them within the destination
url.
To do this simply place a question mark at the end of your
destination url followed by the query-string parameters.
Make sure to place an ampersand (&) to separate each
parameter. If the destination url already include query string
parameters then simply add the additional parameters at the very
end of the url.
Also, you can utilize a more automatic approach to tagging your
links which is using the Google Analytics URL Builder as indicated
in the screenshot below:

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The instructions are straight forward just enter in the values for
each parameter in the appropriate fields.

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Conclusion
Thanks once again for purchasing this product. If you have
successfully read the content contained in this guide then you are
on the way to becoming a seasoned webmaster. Web analytics is
one of the most critical skills that you can learn because you will
be able to understand so that you can further improve your
business. My recommendation is to get started with this asap as
the new insights you’ll make with your internet business will be
staggering.