Analytics: A Primer

I had a couple comments on this post asking about how I track readership. So here's more about readership tracking than you probably wanted to know. Seriously, I made a little (probably unnecessary) tutorial and everything.


I used to use a statcounter, but then Aaron and I discovered Google Analytics and we haven't looked back. You can't see exactly who is reading (wouldn't that be so awesome if you could?), but you can see how many unique visitors you get each day, where they are from (I have a lot of Utah readers. Hi Utahns!), and how they got to your site. Plus a lot of other fun information.

So, let's get started.

I uploaded all imagines directly, so you can click to enlarge if you want.

First, go here. It's the Google Analytics homepage. You log in with your general Google ID (same as blogger, gmail, etc).

Once you log in, you need to add a website profile.


Click "Add Website Profile" which will take you to this screen:



You can use domains to manage groups of profiles. Each site is one profile. I have two domains, one for each blog, but I could have created one central Moncur domain and inserted each of them as profiles. And then Aaron went in and added his DMPhoto profile under one domain and so the organization makes no sense whatsoever and kind of drives me crazy. But you can organize this any way you want. I don't think any of you are managing large numbers of sites so it really doesn't matter.

If this is the first profile you're putting up, make sure the button for "Add a profile for a new domain" is clicked. Put the URL for your site in the URL box, make sure the proper country and time zone are selected, then click continue.

Digression: it's really weird when you are left handed but use the mouse with your right hand and then you try to write with the mouse and thus, the wrong hand. I was more entertained by mouse-writing with my right hand than I probably should have been.

Moving on.

After you click continue, you'll get to this screen:

Highlight the html code and press ctrl+c. Or whatever for Macs. Just copy it and head on over to Blogger.

Open your Layout tab and click "Add a Page Element" in your side column. Choose the HTML/Javascript option and paste your code in. Click ok.

You can also add the code directly to the blog's template under the "Edit HTML" section, but I'm terrified of messing with that code. So I do it this way and save myself from possibly annihilating my blog.

The FAQ on Analytics says that it starts processing data after 24 hours, but I swear it took 3 days for anything to show up for me. So after installing the code, just sit back for a couple days.

After 24 hours or however long, log in and you'll get a page that looks something like this. In the upper right hand corner is a drop down menu that lists your domains. You can see I have TheMoncurs and TheMoncursBaby up there. The center box lists the profiles under whichever domain you have selected. Since TheMoncurs domain is selected, we can look at data for TheMoncurs.blogspot.com or DMPhotoGallery.com. Which is the non-organization I was talking about earlier. In any event, if data is being collected and you can view information about the site, you'll get a little green check mark under "status." Click "View Reports" to start your Analytics adventure!


This is your home page. At the top is a little graph showing daily visitors. I had 105 visitors yesterday! Which is above average for me (the "Visits" link informs me that my daily average is 61). You can see the traffic fluctuations that come with weekends and holidays (no one read my blog on Christmas and traffic drops significantly on Fri/Sat/Sun).

There's quite a bit of useful information on this page. You can see that I have a bounce rate of 70%, which means that 70% of people who go to my blog leave immediately. That number always climbs significantly when I haven't been posting much. It drops a bit when I'm being a bit more rabid about daily posting. There's always a fairly significant bounce rate though..usually from people who are googling things, jump to your site for half a second, figure out it's not what they're looking for, and leave.

You can click the Map Overlay section to see where your readers are located.

I just found out that I have had 9 visits from Sweden! That's the highest I've got from anywhere outside the US beside Canada (67 visits)(Hi Kate!) and South Africa (19)(Caitlin?). Ok and it turns out I had 35 from the UK (and they're not all bounces..it seems I might have a reader in London. Hello? London reader? You there?). So maybe the 9 isn't as exciting as I was thinking. But seriously! Sweden!

Most international hits bounce, but it's still fun that someone from Ghana somehow found my blog one day.

Anyway, you can click on a location and it gives you all kinds of useful information about readers from that geographic location.

As I mentioned, I'm quite popular in Utah, so here's a screenshot from my Utah page:

Like half of my Utah hits comes from Orem. This is where my sister Nikki and her husband Sam live. They probably account for a lot of that. However, I have even MORE hits from Midvale. I don't think I've ever even been to Midvale. Who is reading from Midvale? Provo and Salt Lake also send a lot of traffic my way, which makes sense because I have a lot of friends in those areas. But it also makes me wonder if any of my ex boyfriends read, since most of them are currently there. Oh, the mystery that Analytics brings into my life!

Ok this is getting ridiculously long, so let's just skip on over to my favorite part: the traffic sources tab. It's on the left side of the screen on the main page.

The pie chart tells you what percentage of your traffic is direct, referral, or search engine driven. Mine used to be almost all direct. As more people link to me, the more referral traffic I get.

The bottom left shows what sites are driving traffic to you. Nikki and Sam's blog refers the most, followed by my baby blog. If someone links to you and then someone clicks on that link, it'll show up in this section. Or, if you've commented on a blog and left your address and someone clicks it, that will show up too. And sometimes there are completely random sites that you can't figure out why they are showing up as a referral (this has happened to me twice).

On the bottom right you can see what search terms people enter into Google to end up at your blog. It's always a lot of fun and I usually check Analytics specifically for this section. Shawna Cozens is no longer the top thing people are Googling to get to me..she's number 15 and my name is finally higher up. Yay! I'm more popular on my own blog than Shawna Cozens! No offense, Shawna Cozens (PS miss you. New York totally sucks right? Come back!)

Someone found my blog by googling "Medical condition boobs growing." I really want to know why that brought them here. And what made them stay for 6 minutes and 37 seconds.


So that's Google Analytics in a nutshell. There are more functions and reports, but I don't really use them (which means: I don't understand the data they are giving me). I'm not sure how useful it is, but it's fun! I love seeing where my readers are coming from, both geographically and technologically. And the what people google section is always good blog fodder. Although, I'll be honest, I think Analytics creates more questions than it answers. Because you'll ask yourself, "I wonder how many readers I have?" and G.A. will tell you the answer but then show you that you have 6 readers in Maryland and 3 in Sri Lanka and then you're like, "Holy crap, who is reading in Maryland and Sri Lanka???" And then it kind of snowballs from there. Have fun!