Google Analytics

Generally, what is not measured cannot be improved. That is why it is important that in an environment where everything leaves its mark, you use the appropriate analysis tools. And this is where Google Analytics comes into play. It is the main digital analytics tool that will help you make decisions at key moments.

 

What is Google Analytics?

The tool called Google Analytics allows you to monitor websites, blogs, and social networks. Also, it offers you default and customizable reports. In this way, it offers grouped information on the traffic that reaches the websites according to the audience, the acquisition, the behavior, and the conversions that take place on the website.

 

Indeed, it works on elements as varied and important as the following:

  • The number of visits
  • The duration of the same
  • Traffic sources
  • The pages visited

 

It also acts on sections such as:

  • The sections preferred by your users
  • Keywords used
  • Technical details of the visitor’s devices.

 

However, what really makes Google Analytics the most complete tool is that it is compatible with the rest of the platform’s tools.

 

Then it is possible to combine Analytics with AdWords, Blogger, or YouTube. In fact, all the Google tools in which visits and traffic are counted can be combined and complemented with Google Analytics. Besides, there are different attractive resources for Analytics available in Google Chrome. You can play with them too.

 

How does Google Analytics work?

The free Google Analytics tool collects data using a combination of cookies, browsers, and JavaScript code. The analytics program can collect information from your site thanks to the JavaScript code that you must include in your pages and the cookies that are generated once the user accesses the web through a browser.

 

In this way, all Google Analytics records the activity of your user from when he arrives until he leaves your website and transforms it into different reports with graphs and statistical data so that it is easier to know the evolution.

 

Google Analytics: Processes

Its operation is based on three processes: the collection of data, the processing of the same, and the creation of reports. However, to start the process, as in any strategy, you must set goals.

 

Data collection

Google Analytics uses JavaScript code to collect information from websites.

 

In this way, Analytics records a visit each time a user views a page with the Google Analytics code. For mobile apps, you need to add code to each “activity” you want to track.

 

Step-by-step data collection:

  1. The server responds by sending the page that is requested to the user’s browser. In this way, once the browser analyzes the data, it will contact other servers that will process some parts of the code on that page it requests. This is how the code works.

 

  1. Then, the browser of the user who visits your page requests that code from Analytics, (the platform sends it and it is saved in a file called Urchin.js.) While the code is running, the previously named attributes of the visitor and your browsing.

 

  1. When all the data has been collected, the code creates cookies on the visiting user’s computer.

 

  1. By having the cookies already defined, the code sends all this information to the Google Analytics server by requesting an invisible GIF file.

 

  1. Finally, it saves the data in another file called Logs File and creates a data section in it for each page viewed. This data includes aspects such as the date and time, the search engine from which the visitor comes, the number of visits, etc.

 

Data processing

Once the interactions of a user have been collected, Google Analytics begins data processing to transform the raw data into useful data that provides you with knowledge. To process them, each of the data sections is analyzed separately. That is, its attributes are divided.

 

Thus, Google Analytics transforms each attribute into elements that it calls “fields”. In this way, for example, the IP address will become the “Visitor’s IP” field. Each section or line provides several attributes and each of them is stored in different fields.

 

Report generation

The resulting reports can be consulted both from the Google Analytics web service itself and from other spaces for which it is necessary to use the reporting APIs.

 

Each report is created based on field comparisons. Aspects such as the visitor’s city or its conversion rate are taken into account. And once the data is stored in the database, the process is concluded.