Google Analytics

Google AdWords

• To get useful information from your AdWords campaign in your Analytics account, you must link your accounts. This is not done automatically.

Conversions

• A conversion (1-per-click) means only a single conversion is reported for a single visitor / customer; this is true even for multiple conversion goals. On the other hand, conversion (many-per-click) reports the total number of conversions for a visitor, following 30 days of an AdWord click.

• To view a detailed Conversion report, including segmentation by conversion name (very useful if you have several conversions), you must include the Many-per-click conversion column. Then you can use the segmentation by conversion name (or type) by creating a normal segment.

Tracking

• With the new asynchronous system, the GA script is loaded asynchronously. There is a queue of commands that can be set; once the script is loaded, they will be executed. Once the script is loaded, any command entered into the queue is also directly executed.
• If you give the "_trackPageview" command twice (to the same tracker), two calls to the Google backend servers are made. For custom variables obtained after a first "_trackPageview", it may thus be necessary to issue a second one. The second call may be with a virtual URL, if the custom variable is associated to the entire visit (session scope).

Back Office

Concepts

• It is important to understand the difference between dimensions and metrics. Dimensions allow you to select only part of the total data available (for instance: I want data corresponding to page titles), whereas metrics represent the results of the data (how many pageviews, which conversion rate, etc). A good way to distinguish dimensions from metrics is to remember that metrics will always have number values, whereas dimensions are usually text.

• In custom reports, the Explorer choice allows you the full data visualization (with graphs). The flat table choice only reports data in a plain looking table.

Main Interface Entry Points

• Home:
  • Real-time: very useful real time data.
  • Intelligence: useless, allows you to define automatic alerts.
  • Dashboards: contains your dashboards (which is a collection of shortcuts). Not very useful.

• Visitors: information about visitors (browsers, capabilities, country).
• Traffic sources: very important, can help you understand where your visitors come from.
• Content: which pages are viewed.
• Goals: user-defined goals.
• E-commerce: track transactions and items sold.

• Custom Reporting: contains a list of custom reports, and allows you to create new ones.

• Advanced segments: crucial, allows you to set custom segments.

Misceallenous

• There is no way to visualize custom variables values or data in the standard GUI; you must create an advanced segment or custom report.
• You can share custom reports! Very useful, especially for Kameleoon Analyst.

Limitations

Goals

• Goals can not be set retroactively; you must set them and only once they are set, data is collected.

Custom variables

• Only 5 custom variables. To overcome this, you can put data in the URL (maybe with virtual page views?).
• 50 variables are available in the Premium version of Analytics.

Sampling

• http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/concepts/gaConceptsSampling.html

Questions

• What's the difference between "Organic" and "Referral" ?