Hey everyone!
Here in England there was a very popular sitcom called Dad’s Army that ran between 1968 and 1977. In it there was a character called Corporal Jones who had the famous catchphrase, “Don’t panic!” This just came to mind when I thought of the title to this latest blog post so I thought it may raise a smile for those familiar with it 🙂
So why the title? You may (or may not!) have noticed that I like to come up with quirky subject titles for my blog posts but they always relate to the content of the post. Well the subject of this post is with regards to Google Analytics. A few posts back I spoke about how I’d discovered the value of using Google Analytics after not bothering to use it previously. Well I have just had the realisation that I clearly haven’t been using it properly! I’m sure that there are likely a few areas in which I haven’t been making full use of it, but this particular area is one that’s had me scratching my head for the last few days…
In Analytics there’s a section where you can see the total number of views to your website. As I’m still pretty much a newbie and certainly a newbie with regards to being able to monitor the traffic to my site I have been following this statistic on a daily basis ever since installing Analytics. Now of course I realise and appreciate that visitor numbers will vary from day to day and that there will be periods of time when vistor numbers jump up and times when numbers will dip, this is to be expected of course, but the total number of unique visitors can only remain the same or go up. But a few days ago I thought I was going mad…! I checked the total number of visitors and I was sure that the number had dropped! This couldn’t be right, I thought, so I figured that I must have been recalling the previous day’s total incorrectly. Yesterday I saw that the number had definitely dropped and today it had dropped even further. How strange! Well not really, it turns out. I have just realised that there is a date range on the top-right of the screen. So what I am seeing is the total number of visitors for the last month, not the total number of visitors since installing Analytics! Duh! So don’t panic! It’s perfectly normal 😳
So I just thought I’d share this bit of info with you as, if you’re already an Analytics expert then this will likely give you a chuckle and if you, like me, find yourself puzzling over a seemingly impossible drop of total unique visitors then you’ll understand why it’s happening! All you have to do is change the date range that’s displayed and voila! – you’ll see the overall total. So not an earth-shattering tip perhaps, but one that’s sure to be useful if you didn’t already realise that there’s the date range selection on there 😉
Hi Glenn! Yes indeed Google Analytics is “perhaps” one of the best free software around so far. And from what you said, you are still probably using a minimum percentage of its capacity.
When integrated with Google Webmaster tool is definitely the best (free) intelligence you can ask for.
I use it for my customers to find out what keywords are attracting the visitors and the percentage of Click Through Rate once prospects read the titles and descriptions in the S.E.R.P. ..(Meaning: if people search for “new gadgets” and the posts’ title or description that you get on Google results isn’t STRICTLY related to what they look for, they won’t click on it so the C T R of those ignored sites won’t certainly be high.
CTR and Bounce Rate are the metrics we should keep an eye on definitely as Google is striving more than ever to bring related results to people (which is fair enough and about time I believe), that’s why so many sites have been wiped away from search results recently…
I could go on and on but for your sake I’m stopping right here!
Avinash Kaushik is the Man if you are serious about Analytics, have a look to his site http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/, it has been enlightening for me!!
Keep up you amazing, inspiring job mate!!
V@l!
Hey Val,
Thanks so much for stopping by and leaving a comment! I’ll take a look at Avinash Kaushik’s site, thanks for the suggestion 🙂
Easy mistake to make Glenn! We have all been there at some time or another.
Google analytics gives you a ton of information about your site and it can take a while to get your head around it all. I am discovering new things about it all the time.
It is very exciting to see your traffic increase that’s for sure!
Sandy Halliday recently posted…Speed Up Your Blog Load Time And See Improvements In Your Ranking
Hi Sandy,
Thanks so much for dropping by and leaving a comment! What I particularly like about Analytics is the fact that I can actually see day by day that my methods are working. It can be hard to slog away at this stuff and not see the results that we all would love to see, but having a way to see behind the scenes, as it were, helps me to keep my focus and remind me that I am actually doing things right!