1) Google Analytics provides various metrics and reports to analyze website traffic and user behavior in context. Pageviews, visits, visitors, time on site, traffic sources, and content reports all provide insights but must be analyzed together rather than in isolation. 2) Pageviews count each page load, visits are sessions between a user and website, and visitors are uniquely identified. Time on site, pageviews, and bounce rates provide different perspectives on user engagement. 3) Traffic source reports show where users come from and which sources drive quality traffic as measured by metrics like bounce rates and conversions. Navigation and entrance path reports help optimize the user experience.

1. Google Analytics IQ Lessons
2. Interpreting Results
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

2. 2.1. Guidelines
• When analyzing your traffic, avoid focusing on
just a single metric. You must look each variable
in the context of other metrics, in order to get a
clearer picture.
• Putting data into context can help us ask the
right questions and decide on a course of action.
• Analyzing trends is another useful way to bring
context into your analysis (use the graph views
for this!)
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

3. 2.2. Pageviews, visits & visitors
• A pageview is counted every time a page on your website loads.
• A visit -- or session -- is a period of
interaction between a web browser and a
website. Closing the browser or staying
inactive for more than 30 minutes ends
the visit.
• A visitor is uniquely identifed by a GA
visitor cookie which assigns a random
visitor ID to the user, and combines it
with the timestamp of the visitor’s frst
visit.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

4. 2.2. Pageviews, visits & visitors
• A pageview is defned as a view of a page that is tracked by the Google Analytics Tracking Code. If a visitor
hits reload or returns to it, an additional pageview will be recorded.
• A unique pageview represents the number of visits during which that page was viewed--whether one or
more times.
• The “Absolute Unique Visitors” report counts each visitor during your selected date range only once.
• The “New vs. Returning” report classifes each visit as coming from either a new visitor or a returning
visitor.
• A high number of new visits suggests that you are successful at driving traffic to your site while a high
number of return visits suggests that the site content is engaging enough for visitors to come back.
• You can look at the Recency report to see how recently visitors have visited. You can look at the Loyalty
report to see how frequently they return. Both reports are under Visitor Loyalty in the Visitors section.
• The Pageviews metric can be found in the Visitors Overview and in the Content section reports. Most of
the other reports show Pages Viewed per Visit instead of Pageviews.
• Unique Pageviews is only found in the Content section.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

5. 2.3. Time Metrics
• To calculate Time on Page, GA compares the timestamps of the visited pages:
A visitor saw page A, then page B, and then left the site:
- The Time on Page for page A is calculated by subtracting the page A timestamp
from the page B timestamp.
- Atention: In order for this calculation to take place, the GA Tracking Code must be
executed on both pages.
- The Time on Page for page B is 0 seconds, because there is no subsequent
timestamp that Google Analytics can use to calculate the actual Time on Page.
- Time on Site is calculated adding the different Time on Page.
• For Average Time on Page, bounces are excluded from the calculation.
• To calculate Average Time on Site, Google Analytics divides the total time for all
visits by the number of visits. Bounces remain a part of the calculation.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

6. 2.3. Time Metrics
• Some sites make extensive use of Flash or other interactive
technologies which don’t load new pages frequently and all
the user interaction takes place on a single page.
• As a result, it’s common for sites like this to have high bounce
rates and low average times on site.
• If you have such a site, you may wish to set up your tracking
so that virtual pageviews or events are generated as the user
performs various activities.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

7. 2.3. Time Metrics
• The Length of Visit report categorizes visits according to the
amount of time spent on the site during the visit.
• The graph allows you to visualize the entire distribution of
visits instead of simply the ‘Average Time on Site’ across all
visits.
• You can see whether a few visits are skewing your ‘Average
Time on Site’ upward or downward.
• The Length of Visit report can be found under Visitor Loyalty
in the Visitors section.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

8. 2.4. Traffic Sources
• The reports in the Traffic Sources section show you where your traffic is
coming from on the internet. You can compare them to fnd out which
sources send you the highest quality traffic:
- Direct Traffic = visitors who clicked on a bookmark or typed the URL.
- Referring Sites = sites that send traffic to you (banner ads or links featured
on blogs, affiliates…)
- Search Engine traffic = click on a search results link in Google, Yahoo… It
can be organic (free) or paid
- Paid search engine traffic is pay per click or cost per click traffic that you purchase from
a search engine -- for example on Google AdWords.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

9. 2.4. Traffic Sources
• WHAT MAKES A GOOD SOURCE OF TRAFFIC?
• One easy indicator of quality is Bounce Rate -- the percentage of visits in which
the person left without viewing any other pages.
• A high bounce rate suggests that the site isn’t relevant to what the visitor is
looking for
• By clicking the “compare to site average” icon and selecting a comparison metric,
you can see which sources outperform and underperform the site average.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

10. 2.4. Traffic Sources
• The All Traffic Sources report lists all of the sources sending traffic. It is
helpful to identify your top performing sources.
- For example, in the report, we see
that blogger.com referred more
traffic than any other source. It has
a medium of referral because it is a
referral from a site.
- The second most popular source of
traffic was direct. Direct traffic
always has a medium of (none).
- Free Google search engine traffic
was the fourth largest referrer.
- The medium of organic tells us that
this traffic came from clicks on
unpaid search engine results.
- The medium of cpc on this entry
tells us that this traffic came from
paid search results.
- You may sometimes see _referrals_
from google.com. These can come
from Google Groups posts or static
pages on other Google sites.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

11. 2.4. Traffic Sources
• If you have goals or ecommerce set up on your site, you have a much
wider range of metrics with which to assess performance. Click on the
Goal Conversion or Ecommerce tabs to view which sources are driving
conversions and purchases.
• The Keywords report is very useful for understanding what visitors were
expecting to fnd on your site:
- Keywords with a high bounce rate tell you where you failed to meet that
expectation.
- You can isolate your paid search engine traffic by clicking the Paid link.
- If you have paid keywords with a high bounce rate, you should evaluate
whether your landing pages are relevant or whether you should continue
to buy those keywords.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

12. 2.4. Traffic Sources
• By clicking on the ‘keyword’ entry in the table you can see its report and to fnd
out which landing page is being used for this keyword, we’ll select Landing Page
from the Dimension pulldown menu.
• We can now see which
landing page is being
used and evaluate it’s
relevance to the
keyword (particularly
helpful if we use
multiple landing pages).
• You can fnd out which landing pages are responsible for the poor performance
and send the keyword traffic to the most effective landing page.
• Be sure to also check the bounce rates for organic, non-paid keywords. This
information can offer insights into how to best focus your search engine
optimization efforts.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

13. 2.4. Traffic Sources
• By default, Google Analytics attributes a conversion or sale to the
campaign that most recently preceded the conversion or sale. For
example:
- if a visitor clicks on an AdWords ad and then later returns via a referral to
purchase something, the referral will get credit for the sale.
- if instead the visitor returns directly, then the AdWords ad will credit for
the sale.
• To prevent a specifc referral or campaign from overriding a prior
campaign, simply append “utm_nooverride=1” to all referring campaign
links. This ensures that the conversion is always atributed to the original
referrer (or frst campaign the user clicked on).
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

14. 2.5. Content Reports
• The frst three reports listed in the Content section all show the same
information, but each report organizes it differently:
- The Top Content report lists each
page that received traffic.
- The Content by Title report groups
your pages according to Title tag.
You can click on a title to see the
pages that share that title.
- The Content Drilldown report
groups pages according to
directory. You can click on a
directory to see the pages in the
directory.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

15. 2.5. Content Reports
• Pages in your Content reports are represented by their “request URIs”,
which is the part of the URL after the domain name. So, a forward slash
represents your home page.
• When you create your profle, you should specify the name of your
homepage as the Default page. That way, instead of having forward slash
show up in your reports, you’ll see your homepage URI instead.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

16. 2.5. Content Reports
• The Top Landing Pages report lists all of the pages through which people
entered your site. Use this report to monitor the number of bounces and
the bounce rate for each landing page (it is good indicator of landing page
relevance and effectiveness).
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

17. 2.5. Content Reports
• Navigation Analysis reports can help you understand how people move
through your site.
• The reports are listed on the Content Overview page. They’re also
available from a pulldown menu when you drill down to a page detail
report.
• The frst of these -- Navigation Summary --- can help you see how people
arrived at a specifc page and where they went afterwards (see next slide)
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

18. 2.5. Content Reports
• The list of pages that were viewed immediately before the page or pages
is shown in the left column. Pages viewed immediately after in the right.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

19. 2.5. Content Reports
• Sometimes the Previous Page, the Next Page, and the page you are
analyzing are all the same page. This can be caused by visitors hitting the
refresh buton multiple times and generating “self-referring” hits.
• It can also be caused, for example, if the page has graphics that the visitor
can click to enlarge. Here’s what happens:
- The visitor views the page and Google Analytics registers a pageview.
Then the visitor clicks on a graphic and views the enlarged graphic fle.
- This does not result in a pageview because the enlarged graphic fle
doesn’t have the Google Analytics Tracking Code. The visitor then clicks
the back buton, which registers another pageview.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

20. 2.5. Content Reports
• The Entrance Paths report is a powerful tool for analyzing navigation
paths.
• For example, let’s say that you want to fnd out whether people clicked
the Purchase buton on your landing page and actually completed the
purchase.
• To fnd out, go to the Top Landing Pages report and click the landing page
you want to analyze.
• Once you are on the Content Detail report for the page, click the Entrance
Paths link (see next slide)
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

21. 2.5. Content Reports
In the middle column,
you’ll see all the
possible clicks people
made on the page.
Choose the link that
represents the
Purchase page.
In the right hand column, you’ll now see all the pages visitors went to after the Purchase page.
By looking at this list, you’ll be able to see how many visits ended up on the Purchase
Completion page.
This report can show you if the landing page is doing the job you designed it for.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University

22. 2.5. Content Reports
You can use the “Analyze” drop-down menu to view additional reports
such as Entrance Sources and Entrance Keywords.
The “Content” drop down menu allows you to select -- or search for --
specifc pages to analyze.
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Based on Google’s Conversion University