My Tools: Google Analytics

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time will know that I’m a bit of a numbers freak. I used to think that everyone was like me, but I’m steadily realising that not everyone approaches graphs and charts with quite the same level of enthusiasm.

If you are a numbers person – read on. If you think numbers are as interesting as a postman’s socks you have my permission to go and read something more appropriate to your needs.

For a numbers man link me Google Analytics is heaven. I can tell you more information than you could possibly want to know, or could be bothered to ask about.

I can tell you where people came from, where they went to, what browser they were using, where there device is situated, what search keywords they used, and so much more.

Probably the best bit about Analytics is that you get all of this information for the princely sum of £0. Now there’s a bargain.

For those of you not aware of analytics it works like this:

• You register for an account at analytics.google.com.
• You then add a website profile.
• It then generates some code which you put in a sensible place on your site. In the case of this site typepad even have a widget to make it that much easier, and I know that wordpress allows the same.
• Then you wait a while, preferably 24 hours.

Bit by bit, the numbers start rolling in and you can enter numbers heaven.

I have a number of favourite views.

The first thing I normally notice is the Traffic Source view. In recent times there has been a shift here. Google used to absolutely dominate these numbers, they are still big, but they are down to 30%. The difference has been twitter and a myriad of other referers who have said something about one of my posts on their blog (thanks).

Having said that, I still have a good look through the search keywords. Should I be worried that the top two keywords are “graham chastney blog” and “graham chastney”, are people really trying to find me.

As a technologist I’m also interested in things like the browsers that people use – Internet Explorer is still out in front, but Firefox is catching fast.

I’m also really interested in the location of my visitors. Being based in the UK and would expect many visitors from there, the number of visitors from the USA is nearly as big. Being able to drill down beyond country is fun, but it’s not really that useful for my blog.

A blog is really about the content though, and that’s where I get the best information, what are people reading? The simple answer to that is – all sorts of stuff. There have been a few really popular ones, but the reading is very varied, which I suppose reflects the variance in my writing.

You can also decide to share your analytics with other Google users if you so desire. I don’t, primarily because it’s a person blog and I’m not sure else would care about my statistics.

Analytics is so good that I regularly ask myself the question – “why can’t I have this at work?”