Mobile Media

Google Analytics Explained

Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates data about visits to a website. The tool is aimed at analysts as opposed to server-side administrators from which the industry of web analytics was born. In the past, due to the high level of technology required, server-side administrators were responsible for setting up reporting tools and analyzing data from those tools. This is no longer the case with Google Analytics. The people who are best at analyzing data are now the ones who are customizing the tool and analyzing the data.

Due to its flexibility, no cost, and ease of use, Google Analytics is the most prevalent website analytics tool in use today, being integrated in about half of all websites, including the top 10,000 most popular websites.

Google Analytics can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, banner ads, pay-per-click ads, e-mails, and links within Word and PDF documents. It can track conversions, such as clicking a particular link, placing an order, making a donation, viewing a specific page, or downloading a particular file. And it can be used for in-depth analysis by setting up goals and funnels.

Google Analytics is limited to sites that have traffic of fewer than five million page views per month (about two page views per second), unless the site is linked to a Google AdWords campaign.