Friday, April 3, 2009

"Tracking Website Traffic with Google Analytics"

Back in 2005, Google purchased "Urchin," a software company specializing in helping website 001_16 owners track and analyze their site traffic. Back then rumors flew as to what Google had in store for their new found property. They renamed and released it as a free service we all know and love, "Google Analytics." Former Urchin users paid  about two hundred dollars a month for something now being offered to millions of users at no charge.

So what is "Google Analytics" and why should you care? It's used to track site traffic and will tell you things like how many pages were viewed, keywords used to find your site, and what visitors do when visiting your website.

A single account can track up to 40 different websites. Not only can you track your Google Adwords campaigns, but all of your other online marketing programs, too (such as email ads, banner advertising and your other pay per click campaigns). It automatically imports your
Adwords cost data so you can track the effectiveness of your Adwords campaign. This is powerful information and if you study it, you'll find out what is and isn't working with your website and your advertising campaigns.

Now before you disregard Analytics as a "freebie" service not worth your time and effort, think again. It's a full featured, powerful package with over 80 reports and many advanced features. It's easy to use even for a beginning marketer.

If you already have a "Google Adwords" account you can sign up for Analytics from within the Adwords control panel. Just look for the "Analytics Tab." If you're not an Adwords user you can sign up at http://www.Google.com/analytics 

Once you're registered, you'll be given some Java script code to paste onto the web pages you want to track. If you don't use Adwords you'll have to keep it under 5 million pageviews a month. If you're a small business, that should be pretty easy to do. Adwords users are allowed unlimited page view tracking, which is another benefit of being a Google pay per click user.

There's a lot of buzz online as to what Google will be doing with all of this information they are collecting. Some good, some bad and those concerned with privacy believe you'll be letting Google know a it too much about your business stats. Either way, you may want to take a look at it. If you don't have a way to currently analyze your website traffic, this is definitely a serious package to consider. If you do have a service already in place and are paying a monthly fee, switching to Google Analytics will help decrease your monthly expenses an put
more money back in your pockets where it belongs.

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