Archive for Analytics
Google Analytics Filter: Force URI Case to Lowercase
Posted by: | CommentsPrevent Duplicate Line Items in Google Analytics Due to Mixed Case URLs with the Force Lowercase Google Analytics Filter
Google Analytics by default captures data just as it appears in a visitors browser. This being so, you can have two or more URLs that are the same but appear as separate entries due to different cases in the URLs, both lowercase and uppercase.
For Example:
- /coffee/flavorA/index.html
- /coffee/flavorA/INDEX.HTML
Although both will take you to the same page if you were to put them into your browser, Google Analytics will create separate line entries for each one leaving you to have to merge the two to get to the complete data for that URL. Imagine the pain if you had 100s, 1000s or more pages on your website with multiple line entries for the same URL.
However, Google Analytics allows you to apply a Custom Filter to remedy this problem. You can associate this filter on a profile by profile basis in case you have certain profiles that you do not want this applied to. One thing worth noting is that this won’t “fix” past data already in your reports, but anything going forward it will put into one line entry (either lowercase or uppercase depending on how you setup the Custom Filter.
Here are the easy steps to create the custom filter that will force the Request URI to lowercase or uppercase:
Google Analytics App for the iPhone – A Quick Review
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The best Google Analytics App available for the iPhone right now is in my opinion without a doubt (and simply named) Analytics App.
Analytics App gives you complete mobile access to your Google Analytics data from your iPhone. Whether you have just one site profile and one Google Analytics (GA) account, or multiple accounts with multiple profiles, this iPhone app is something I believe you will really be happy with.
For the past two months I have been using Analytics App at least a couple times per day, be it to answer questions on the go for others (i.e. HiPPOS) or even just simply playing around with it for fun to satisfy curiosities. It’s intuitively easy to use with virtually no learning curve for the app itself. Basically just click and there’s your data. I wouldn’t use this for actual data analysis (and this in part because of the limitations of the iPhone itself) but it’s extremely handy and fun to be able to have on the go with you.
Before I purchased it though, I thought it might be difficult to view analytics data on the iPhone due to the screen size, but the interface fits the iPhone perfectly and the data surprisingly is extremely easy to view with no straining on the eyes, even the charts it displays are easy to view.
More than 40 Reports Are Available to You
Analytics App has 9 standard Google Analytics Overview Reports:
- Dashboard, Visitors Overview
- Traffic Overview
- Content Overview
- Event Tracking Overview
- E-Commerce Overview
- Site Search Overview
- Goals Overview
- Quick access Dashboard for Today’s data.
Plus, more than 30 detailed reports you can view by drilling down in each of the areas, for example Keywords, Visitor Loyalty, Top Landing Pages, Top Content, Event Actions, and the ability to view your Custom Reports that have already set up inside your Google Analytics account.
Unfortunately, and unless I am missing something, you can’t click on individual referring sites themselves to view them in the iPhone browser. And, URL’s are limited to 22 characters so in the Top Content Reports you’re not able see the entire URLS or click on them either, so if your URL’s are long and non-intuitive before the 22 characters are used up you may not be able to know which URL is being referred to (but you can always use the Content by Title report).
Viewing Multiple Accounts
I should note, that to view multiple accounts with Analytics App you’ll need to give access for one account to view the others – but this has to be done on GA website itself, or you do it the old fashioned way by logging-out and then log back in on the app for each account itself if you want to view different accounts (I want to emphasize this is for accounts, not profiles as all profiles under your account are visible and selectable when you launch the app).
Misc.
Security: Analytics App stores your GA username and password information locally on your iPhone for security reasons.
Date Ranges: I found that setting the dates to view your data for is actually easier than in Google Analytics using the standard iPhone scroll wheel (and setting it in GA is easy).
Cost
What impressed me the most before I purchased it was that not that it was only $5.99, or that its reviews were overall rather fantastic, but that they offered a money back guarantee via PayPal so I felt that the risk was minimal. I’ve purchased many apps that have left me disappointed, so this was a motivating factor to purchase it on the spot without further consideration.
In Conclusion
So with nothing to lose (your money that is), I would definitely recommend checking the Analytics App out, or if you know someone who already has it to try theirs out – you’ll be glad you did, the app itself is really well produced.
Segmenting Visitors for a Deeper Bounce Rate Insight
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Bounce Rate by definition for a web page is the total number of visitors who enter your website through a particular page and then leave your site without viewing another page divided by the total number who visit that same page. Simplified, bounce rate is the percentage of people who enter your web site, visit only that single web page they entered on, and then leave – without viewing another page. The bounce rate of your high traffic or important web page’s is a highly actionable metric to know.
Although most web analytics tools make it simple to extract your websites or an individual web page’s bounce rate, looking at the bounce rate when presented in aggregate is definitely not as insightful or actionable as it could be and potentially lead to misinterpretation.
Let me explain – your bounce rate by default, without segmenting the data, is typically presenting a bounce rates determined from multiple visitor segments – both the good and the bad. Most likely then, you are then making possible inferences on that bounce rate to that page that could potentially affect all visitor segments – not just the ones that are bouncing.
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Tracking & Separating Subdomain Data under One Profile Using Filters in Google Analytics
Posted by: | CommentsIf you have one Google Analytics profile tracking multiple subdomains (or you want to do so); for example, one profile tracking:
http://www.MyCoolWebsite.com
http://blog.MyCoolWebsite.com
http://youlove.MyCoolWebsite.com
when you view your Google Analytics data in the profile that is tracking all 3 subdomains it won’t by default separate out the data for each actual subdomain. You’ll need to add some additional code to your tracking script and also set up an Advanced Filter.
If each of your subdomains has pages that are named the same, you will see the data reported as aggregate for all them under that page name, therefore the data for those page names will be inflated and not actionable. For example:
http://www.MyCoolWebsite.com/contact.html
http://blog.MyCoolWebsite.com/contact.html
http://youlove.MyCoolWebsite.com/contact.html
will all be rolled up under /contact.html and you will not know what the true data is for the contact.html page on each subdomain. Instead, you will have one entry of /contact.html displaying the data for all traffic to contact.html on all 3 of the subdomains. Not good!
What you will want to do is see it by subdomain so you can attribute the correct data to the correct subdomain.
Luckily, this is easily fixed!
If you already have your pages tagged with the Google Analytics tracking script, just add the line in bold to your existing Google Analytics code (replace MyCoolWebsite.com with the actual domain, not the entire subdomain and of course make sure all of the sites have the same profile tracking number (seen below as UA-xxxxxx-x, the x’s will be replaced by your own account number and profile number).
If you haven’t added the Google Analytics tracking script to your pages add the entire code below – again with your own specific Google Analytics account number and the profile number, and your actual domain:
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((”https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script><script type=”text/javascript”>
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(”UA-xxxxxx-x”);
pageTracker._setDomainName(”MyCoolWebsite.com”);
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>
Next, you will need to set up an Advanced Filter, this will actually separate out the subdomains so that they will be reported separately under that profile:
The finished result is that instead of just 1 instance of /contact.html, you will see it reported in your reports with each subdomain added to /contact.html as follows:
www.MyCoolWebsite.com/contact.html
blog.MyCoolWebsite.com/contact.html
youlove.MyCoolWebsite.com/contact.html
Here is how to set up the Advanced Filter for Tracking and Separating out Subdomains:
- First log-in to Google Analytics.
- Select edit from the profile you created that will track all of the subdomains.
- Select edit in the Filters Applied to Profile section.
- Fill in the below information and Save.
First, here is the actual information for you to copy and paste, then below that is a screenshot of how it should look before you save and apply it to that profile.
Filter Type: Custom filter > Advanced
Field A: Hostname
Extract A: (.*)
Field B: Request URI
Extract B: (.*)
Output To: Request URI
Constructor: /$A1$B1
Activating Google Analytics Site Search in 60 Seconds or Less
Posted by: | CommentsSetting up basic Site Search within Google Analytics to gather data on internal site searches on your website takes less than 1 minute to do. Google Analytics Site search allows you to easily find out what users are searching for within your site and their behavior after the search results are displayed for them.
The benefits of knowing and using the information that internal Site Search data provides I will be posting about in a near future post, but in the meantime I suggest setting this up so that you can start collecting the data in the meantime.
Setting up Site Search within Google Analytics
Note: The only thing you will need to know ahead of time is what your search query parameter is for searches on your website. To find out what your search query parameter is:
1) Go to your website and do a search in your site search box for any keyword
(for my site, I am doing a site search for the word “test”)
2) For 99% of you, you can look at the URL of the search in your browser that is returned
(on my site it shows http://blog.joshbaker.com/?s=test)
3) The search query parameter for my site is s
(if I was to do another search for the term “ecommerce”, the URL would show http://blog.joshbaker.com/?s=ecommerce. The query is ecommerce, but the query parameter is s)
If you are still confused, visit the Google Help Docs on uncovering your query parameter
Turning on Site Search:
Of course you will need to be logged-in to your Google Analytics account.
1) To the right of the website profile you want to add internal site search tracking to, select Edit
2) On the page that appears, on the top right, select Edit
3) Scroll down to the Site Search section
a) Select the radio button next to Do Track Site Search
b) Enter in the query parameter for your site that you found earlier
c) Choose if you want to strip query parameters out of URL or not (most likely you will want to select “yes” so that you just are seeing the actual keywords searched when viewing the data in Google Analytics)
d) Select Save Changes
Site search is now activated in Google Analytics for your website and in just a few hours your data will start appearing.
