What Is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics provides information about visitors to your web site.

The information includes details of the number of visitors on a daily basis over a period of time that you define.

The analysis includes:

• The number of visitors on a daily basis over a period of time that you define.
• The number of page views.
• The average number of pages viewed per visit.
• The Bounce Rate (The number of visitors who look at one page and do not delve further into the Web site.
• The average time per visit.
• The countries that visitors come from.
• The towns that visitors come from.
• The number of new and repeat visitors.
• The search engines used by visitors to find your site.
• The keywords used by visitors to find your site.

 

In late 2005, Google purchased leading web analytics firm “Urchirt” and began offering the service free of charge to certain well-placed technology publications' Web sites. Not long after that, Google launched the Google Analytics service based on the Urchin software, offering it to the general public as a completely free service. The response was amazing and a quarter of a million new accounts were created overnight, with an estimated half to three-quarters of a million Web sites tracked.

All of this caught Google unprepared, and people had to be turned away because there weren't enough resources to support everyone who wanted an account. Google began taking e-mail addresses for interested webmasters who couldn't be accommodated at launch.

How did this happen? How did Google so grossly underestimate the demand for Google Analytics? After all, at $200/month, Urchin did only well - it had good software and a relatively low price point for the industry but it wasn’t exactly inundated with clamouring customers.

Apparently assessments based on Urchin's sales weren't exactly accurate. The demand for real analytics is huge, and the price tag of ‘free' is exactly the price tag that draws in the masses.  

But what are analytics? Most webmasters know enough to realize that they need analytics. But do they know how to read them? How to use them? Are analytics just “site stats on steroids” or can they be used by the average web master, who is a layman and not a professional, to improve the performance of a Web site?  

The answer is that with Google Analytics, the average webmaster can use analytics to improve the performance of a site. And well over a half-million users have figured this out. So many users have turned to Google Analytics and begun to make suggestions about the program that the design team at Google decided it was time to implement some new features and make the application easier to use. And that's how the Google Analytics 2.0 application was born.

In most respects, once a surfer has clicked on a link on a search engine results page, the search engine is blind as to where the surfer goes next. Google seems to have found a way round this by offering the free Google analytics program. Webmasters, using this program, place a code on each of the pages that they wish to analyse. From the webmaster point of view, Google is providing a phenomenally useful research tool. Of course, there must be a benefit from Google's point of view. With the code on your pages, Google can track where surfers go once they have left the search engine results page. How Google Analytics benefits Google must be a matter of conjecture. Remember, that they are trying to provide the best search option for surfers. It could be that if Google Analytics demonstrates that surfers referred to you are staying on your page or Web site, then this will positively effect your ranking. If, on the other hand, you are providing links to other sites and visitors leave your site and go to these, then Google would assume that your site is not in itself providing the required information and this could have a negative effect on your ranking.