Usually the Google Analytics tracking code is inserted into the bottom of your website content, right before the </body> tag of each page you are planning to track. This is the recommended installation, as it helps to avoid page loading issues/delays. Sometimes however it is necessary to implement the code elsewhere on a page, for instance if frames are used, the Google Analytics ‘link’ or ‘linkByPost’ methods are called, or if custom JavaScript functions that may conflict with the ga.js file are being utilised.
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Alternative Google Analytics Tracking Code Implementaion
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The basic implementation of Google Analytics is a relatively straight forward process. Tracking is achieved by adding a snippet of JavaScript code to all the pages on the website that you wish to record statistics for. The tracking code is supplied during the Analytics account setup process, but it can also be found in the settings for the site’s profile within the main account. To find the code, sign into your account, go to the ‘Analytics Settings’ page and select ‘Edit’ on the profile for which you require the JavaScript code. Clicking on ‘Check Status’ in the top right hand corner of the ‘Main Website Profile Information’ box will bring up the tracking code.
Page Views and Unique Page Views sound like they are essentially the same metric, but they’re not. Although similar in name, the difference between them occurs due to the fact that they are calculated in different ways.
A page view is counted each time a page on the website being tracked is loaded or ‘viewed’. With Google Analytics a page view can be counted when any web page with the correct tracking code is loaded, or if the ‘urchinTracker’ event code executes. An ‘urchinTracker’ event can be implemented in order to simulate a page view to be included within Google Analytics reports.
Visits, Visitors and Unique Visitors all sound similar, but each metric differs significantly from the others.
Visits represent the number of individual sessions initiated by visitors to a website. If a user is inactive on a site for 30 minutes or more, then any future activity for that user will be counted as part of a new session and thus a new visit. Any users that leave a site, but return within 30 minutes, will be counted as part of the original session and therefore as part of the initial visit.
It is easy to misinterpret reports in analytics based on not knowing exactly what the terminology means or how the different metrics compare to one another.
Clicks and visits are metrics that are often referred to in the same sense, but they shouldn’t be as they mean different things and vary between applications.
There are a variety of methods for tracking visits to your website. Different web analytics solutions utilise distinct techniques for parsing data and it is therefore quite usual to see discrepancies between their reports. When considering how metrics compare across different web analytics packages you shouldn’t be comparing the numbers. Instead by looking at data trends you will generally tend to see similarities in the statistics.
The main reasons why there are differences between the actual reported numbers within Google Analytics and other web analytics products are listed below:
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Why Does Google Analytics Report Differing Figures To Some Other Web Analytics Products?
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The two main methods for tracking websites and monitoring site usage statistics are ‘JavaScript Page Tagging’ and ‘Log File Analysis’.
Google Analytics is a great example of how JavaScript technology can be utilised to track websites. Other packages such as AWStats and LiveStats are prime examples of Log File tracking. The fact that each application uses different technology to collect data, explains why the reported numbers tend to vary between them. It’s essentially the same data viewed in an alternative way.
Google Analytics is great, but it’s not magic! It’s not some amazing, mystical force that will automatically bring traffic to your website. Nor is it a big neon sign that says “Do this instead of that, and your website will improve.” It’s definitely not the answer to all your website traffic issues. No analytics system available today is any of these things.
Why should I use Analytics?
In short, because you can and it’s free!
Before analytics your options for tracking a website were limited. Most people either used log file interpreters or page counters. Log file interpreting software was generally quite expensive, but the only real feasible option for interrogating and understanding server log files. The main alternative being page counters, just showed you how many times your web pages were viewed, provided they didn’t crash, corrupt or reset!