I never used Urchin, but am getting quite familiar with Google Analytics. I even found a way to hack it so that you can get the entire URL with all URL parameters. Since it's now free, it's an incredibly popular web analytics package and I usually advise my clients to take advantage of it.
Posted Sunday, January 20th, 2008.
I installed the new ga.js tracking script on this blog a few weeks ago and decided to take a look today to see if there are any reporting differences. Here’s what I found for the same time period:
Google Traffic
Old
New
Total Visits:
1293
1047
Pages Per Visit:
1.28
1.57
Avg Time on Site:
00:00:23
00:01.01
Unique Referring Phrases:
783
765
Here’s a couple of screenshots of the top referring [...]
I’ve been a little preoccupied lately and tonight I decided to try out the new Google Analytics tracking code, which uses ga.js instead of urchin.js. To do this, I created a new profile, then added the new code in the footer.inc for this Wordpress theme. This weekend I’ll be comparing results to see if there’s [...]
I was reading Bruce Clay’s September Newsletter and came across a couple of inaccuracies in Jim Sterne’s web analytics article, specifically this part:
Google won’t report on downloads of files like PDF’s, jpg’s of Flash. You want to know about server error messages? You have to look to the pay-to-play vendors.
Well Google Analytics may not give [...]
I love the new version of Google Analytics, but the missing hourly reporting was a frustrating omission, but not anymore. Google has updated the functionality with some new features:
1) Hourly reporting
2) Clickable URLs
3) Cross Segmentation by Network Location
4) Increased number of data rows per page
5) Bounce Rate increase/decrease colors switched
6) Easier AdWords Integration
I looked into this a while back and wrote to Google Analytics support. They responded with this set of requirements for becoming a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant:
In business for 1 year
At least one dedicated person for Google Analytics support
Must provide full service i.e. setup, support, training, and consultation for Google Analytics
Must have an online ticketing [...]
I was looking through an overall keyword conversion report in Analytics and noticed some strange search phrases appearing. They looked like long strings of random numbers and characters. It turns out that AOL must be testing some new URL structure in the search results and changed the variable that identifies the search query. I took [...]
So now that I’ve had a chance to see the new version, I quite like it. I can also confirm that my hack to obtain the full referring URL still works. The only minor difference in the interface is how you get to the Top Content report in the left navigation menus and the filter [...]
Yes, a new version is soon coming.
I haven’t yet seen it, but I’m hoping that it has a report which shows the full URL including all the parameters by default and/or doesn’t mess with the Google Analytics hack I put in place. I guess I’ll find out when one of my accounts get converted in [...]
Part 1 - Detecting http and https Mode Using Javascript
A while back I came across a scenario where a website (typically an ecommerce site) can serve part of their website in both http and https mode. These sites typically use the same template or footer include file for both browser modes. This causes a security [...]
If you have a dynamic website and want to set up conversion goals within Google Analytics, you may need to use regular expressions to define the goal page.
These are extremely useful because they can be used to match specific sequences of characters in a URL. They’re a huge expansion on the common wildcard characters * [...]
