Most Useful Reports
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2025 3:52 am
Google Analytics offers dozens of reports. In addition, these reports can be customized in various ways to make your experience truly unique. Each of the report styles are valuable in their own way, but these are some that will benefit nearly any website:
Visitors Overview – The visitors overview offers information about the type of people visiting your website. You’ll discover how many people are visiting your page, and if you delve deeper, what time of day they’re visiting, the general geographic area they’re from, and what browser or even what size monitor each visitor is using.
Traffic Sources – This report gives you a pie chart showing where the majority of your traffic comes from. You’ll discover if most are coming from search engines or being referred from other sites, or even visiting different pages within your own site. If your search engine traffic is lacking, then some search engine optimization adjustments may be in order.
Landing Pages – This report tells you where visitors are entering your site. If visitors mainly enter from the index page, then they’re either finding your site through a search engine or may have your site bookmarked. However, if one particular page gets a lot of traffic, this tells you that this topic is popular and you may want to offer more about it. You can also use landing pages to track ad campaigns. If you place an ad in a newsletter, use a unique landing page to see how many visitors clicked on the link within the newsletter to visit your azerbaijan whatsapp number database page.
Keywords – This report shows you what keyword terms visitors searched for on a search engine, such as Google or Bing, before visiting on your site. You can use the keywords report to identify the most popular topics on your site and also to search for holes in your content that need to be filled. The report also shows how long the visitor stayed (on average) on a particular page after searching for a keyword. So, if you have a page containing the keyword, “kitchen widget” and the visitor lands and stays on the page only for .02 seconds, you know you’re not meeting the information needs of the visitor who landed on that page. You’ll then want to make adjustments to that page to increase a visitor’s stay. Also of note is that according to Google, “that when SSL search is employed (e.g., if the user is signed in to a Google account, or using the Firefox search bar), Keyword will have the value (not provided).”
Conversions – Driving traffic to your website is important, but if those visitors don’t convert into potential customers, the traffic may not be reaching its potential. This report allows you to track information such as how many visitors signed up for your newsletter, or clicked on your shopping page. The best way to track very specific conversions, such as visitors who share your site on social media, is to set up some goals within Google Analytics.
What is (Not Provided)?
In October of 2011, in an effort to protect the privacy of their users, Google made the decision to change the way they treat outbound clicks from any of their websites (this includes: Gmail, Google Plus, Google Maps, YouTube, etc.)
If a user us logged in, when searching, their search is conducted over SSL (secure socket layer), obscuring any and all referral data related to that search.
When a users visits your site, Google Analytics places a (Not Provided) in your referrer and keyword reports where that data is hidden.
Learn more about why Google has done this here: Making Search More Secure
Visitors Overview – The visitors overview offers information about the type of people visiting your website. You’ll discover how many people are visiting your page, and if you delve deeper, what time of day they’re visiting, the general geographic area they’re from, and what browser or even what size monitor each visitor is using.
Traffic Sources – This report gives you a pie chart showing where the majority of your traffic comes from. You’ll discover if most are coming from search engines or being referred from other sites, or even visiting different pages within your own site. If your search engine traffic is lacking, then some search engine optimization adjustments may be in order.
Landing Pages – This report tells you where visitors are entering your site. If visitors mainly enter from the index page, then they’re either finding your site through a search engine or may have your site bookmarked. However, if one particular page gets a lot of traffic, this tells you that this topic is popular and you may want to offer more about it. You can also use landing pages to track ad campaigns. If you place an ad in a newsletter, use a unique landing page to see how many visitors clicked on the link within the newsletter to visit your azerbaijan whatsapp number database page.
Keywords – This report shows you what keyword terms visitors searched for on a search engine, such as Google or Bing, before visiting on your site. You can use the keywords report to identify the most popular topics on your site and also to search for holes in your content that need to be filled. The report also shows how long the visitor stayed (on average) on a particular page after searching for a keyword. So, if you have a page containing the keyword, “kitchen widget” and the visitor lands and stays on the page only for .02 seconds, you know you’re not meeting the information needs of the visitor who landed on that page. You’ll then want to make adjustments to that page to increase a visitor’s stay. Also of note is that according to Google, “that when SSL search is employed (e.g., if the user is signed in to a Google account, or using the Firefox search bar), Keyword will have the value (not provided).”
Conversions – Driving traffic to your website is important, but if those visitors don’t convert into potential customers, the traffic may not be reaching its potential. This report allows you to track information such as how many visitors signed up for your newsletter, or clicked on your shopping page. The best way to track very specific conversions, such as visitors who share your site on social media, is to set up some goals within Google Analytics.
What is (Not Provided)?
In October of 2011, in an effort to protect the privacy of their users, Google made the decision to change the way they treat outbound clicks from any of their websites (this includes: Gmail, Google Plus, Google Maps, YouTube, etc.)
If a user us logged in, when searching, their search is conducted over SSL (secure socket layer), obscuring any and all referral data related to that search.
When a users visits your site, Google Analytics places a (Not Provided) in your referrer and keyword reports where that data is hidden.
Learn more about why Google has done this here: Making Search More Secure