I love Google, and I especially love Google’s Analytics tool. As I mentioned recently, it’s one of the top five tools that website owners should be using to administer their site.
One of my favorite parts of the tool is the Map Overlay section. Here’s mine from today.
So, I didn’t get a lot of traffic today, and of course most of it came from the states. No big surprise there either.
Mostly from Arizona, which makes sense as I live here, and work here and most of my marketing is here. But there is that one lonely hit up in Illinois. I wanted to investigate that.
Hey, look, Chicago, I love that town, and isn’t there a big blogger conference going on there right now? I think there is. I wonder who would visit my site from there?
Maybe someone I’ve linked to in the past, someone who has cats and an affinity for Buffy and good Vodka? Well, maybe not, but it would be cool if it was her. I wonder if I can find more information….
Well, they’re using Windows…
And Firefox…
And their on a high speed connection…
And they’re staying at the Drake Hotel.
Wow, that is a lot of information. All that for just one visitor, and Google does it for every visitor to your site.
Is it any wonder I love this tool. All I have to do now is figure out how to optimize my content for people staying in a hotel I can’t afford in a city I haven’t been to in years, using an operating system I am trying to move away from and a browser I love.
Now that should be too hard, should it?
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I wonder who would visit your site from Chicago…
Well, you’ve got someone from Massachusetts now too!
Isn’t Analytics AWESOME!? I’m addicted.
Great Post. Vanessa can run from Google but it still finds her!
hey I’m some of those visits from arizona!!! just not as cool as the others
To Vanessa: It’s a mystery ;-)
To Angela: Thanks, and yes, analytics are the internet’s version of crack.
To Gideon: See I did find her!!
To corivus: Aren’t you supposed to be working?
Can Google analytics be wrong? My google analytics show numbers much lower than Webalizer on the server, and even less and GoogleSense? Who is right?
Is there most accurate traffic analizer?
gene: I’d say that yes, they can be wrong. I too have found that my awstats show much higher numbers than Analytics puts out. I assume this is because the hits are recorded differently though. Google only reports information on the pages you paste code on, while awstat and webalizer stats shows information on all pages viewed in any way. Think about if you have 5 PHP calls on a page. awstats and webalizer will record each as a page touched, while Analytic only records it as one.
Of course this is only how I assume it works, I don’t work for Google, so can’t back that up.