How to use Google Analytics: A beginner's guide to Google's service for website-traffic analytics
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Just the name is intimidating to some people: Google Analytics. It might help to know that analytics is the name for the branch of mathematics dedicated to analyzing data, and is generally used to tease out meaningful patterns that can be used to generate statistics and make predictions about future trends.
That said, you don't need to know or perform any math to use Google Analytics - all of that is done in the background for you.
Google Analytics - commonly abbreviated as GA - is a free tool that Google provides to help you understand, analyze, and improve your website traffic. It provides graphs and data that you can use to understand information about your site. Here are just a few examples of the kind of information you can learn using GA:
It's important to note that only the site's owners and managers can see GA data, so strangers, visitors, and competitors cannot, for example, access your Google Analytics page (at least not without your permission or login information).
To get started, you need to create a Google Analytics account for each website you own or manage.
1. Go to the Google Analytics homepage and sign into your Google account if needed.
2. If you don't already have a GA account, click "Sign Up."
3. Follow the setup instructions by entering the name and URL of your web site, along with other details, and click "Get Tracking ID."
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4. On the next page, you'll be given a tracking code that you need to add to the tag on each page of your website that you want to be able to monitor in GA. You can add that tag manually in an HTML editor (following the directions provided by Google) or, if you use a web service like Wix or Squarespace, the webpage editor can do this automatically for you.
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After creating your account, you can enable other people to see your GA page:
1. On your Google Analytics page, click the Gear icon in the lower left corner to open the Admin page.
2. Click "User Management." You should see your own login information.
3. Click the blue plus sign in the upper right corner of the screen.
4. Click "Add users," and enter the email address for each person you want to add to the GA account. They'll each get an email inviting them to GA with their own unique password. You can always return here to revoke their permission.
Once you have a working GA account, you can log in at any time and get a snapshot of your site's performance. Here are some key places to start:
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Dave Johnson/Business Insider
Dave Johnson/Business Insider
Google has a wealth of online instruction and tutorials for Google Analytics. If you want to learn how to use this tool, you should start with Google Analytics Academy, which is a collection of videos and articles that introduce you to every aspect of the site.
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