Ledford, J. L. & Tyler, M. E. (2007). Google Analytics 2.0. Wiley: Canada.
ISBN: 978-0-470-17501-9.
…………..
This Book is Organized in following parts
Part One: Basic Analytics (chapter 1, 2 and 3)
Part Two: Setting Up Google Analytics (Chapter 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9)
Part Three: Dashboards (Chapter 10 and 11)
Part Four: All Reports: Visitors (Chapter 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18)
Part Five: All Reports: Traffic Sources (Chapter (Chapter 18, 19 and 20)
Part Six: All Reports: Content (Chapter 21)
Part Seven: All Reports: Goals (Chapter 22)
Part Eight: All Reports: E-Commerce (Chapter 23, 24 and 25)
………………………………………………………….
Chapter 1: Why Analytics? (Pages 3-8)
Having web site statistics is one thing. Understanding what they mean and what you
should do with them is another thing altogether. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.3)
If you have Windows-based hosting, you may have a Windows-specific stats package,
or your host may use the Windows version of one of the open source stats packages. If
you have hosting on a Linux web server running Apache (and about 60 percent of web
servers run Linux and Apache), you’ll most likely have Analog, Webalizer, or AWStats,
and you may have all three. These software packages are open source under various
versions of the GNU Public License (GPL). web analytics are site stats on steroids.
Stats give you numbers. Analytics give you information. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.4)
Analytics is software that generates metrics. Metrics are measurements. There are all
sorts of possible web site metrics—measurements you can take—about how many
times files are accessed, how many unique IP addresses access the site, how many
pages are served, and so on. Analytics can calculate the most popular pages, how long
the typical person stays on the typical page, the percentage of people who “bounce” or
leave the site from a particular page, and thus the percentage of people who explore the
site more deeply. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.5)
Analytics is a tool for you to use to understand how visitors behave when they visit your
web site. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.7)
…………………………………………………………….
,Chapter 2: Analytics and AWStats (Pages 9-22)
AWStats (Advanced Web Statistics) is an open source log analyzer written in Perl that
can use a variety of log formats and runs on a variety of operating systems. (Ledford &
Tyler, 2007, p.9)
Google Analytics and AWStats have different features with different strengths and
weaknesses. There are two main differences between Google Analytics and AWStats.
First, AWStats is primarily a site statistics program. AWStats counts more than it
calculates. It has far fewer metrics and capabilities than Google Analytics. It’s intended
to be a simpler sort of program — nothing wrong with that. Google Analytics is intended
from the get-go to be a business strength program. It calculates as much as counts and
gives you metrics that, as a business person, you’ll want. Second, AWStats is a log
analyzer. Google Analytics relies on cookies and JavaScript (referred to as “scripting”
from here on out). This has several farranging implications. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007,
p.10)
The AWStats window has a left-hand and a right-hand frame. The righthand frame
shows the reports. The left-hand frame shows the domain name for the site statistics
you’re viewing followed by a text link navigation list. You can go directly to sections of
the main report from any flush-left link. Secondary reports, left-indented with a tiny
AWStats icon, replace the main report in the right-hand frame when you click the
navigation link. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.11)
The dashboard appears at the top of the main report. AWStats notes the time of the last
update. Most web hosts update in the middle of the night. The time listed is on the
server’s time zone and is not necessarily your time zone. You can force an update by
clicking the Update Now link. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.12)
Number of Visits
Number of Visits has two key assumptions: How long a visit is and how much time has
to pass between page loads to make one person have two visits? Fortunately, there are
industry standards — after all, this isn’t 1997. A visit is as long as it is. As long as the
visitor keeps clicking from page to page, it’s still one visit. However, when the user stops
clicking for 30 minutes, the visit ends. If the user starts clicking again, it’s a new visit.
,Thirty minutes is the industry-standard timeout for visits. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.19-
20)
Unique Visitors
The big problem with counting unique visitors is that it’s impossible to figure out from
server logs who’s unique and who’s a visitor. Figure 2-7 deals with this problem. There
are caveats aplenty here because you’re counting visits from unique IP addresses, not
actual people:
■■ Any sort of local area network connected by a single Internet gateway may have
several users with the same apparent IP address.
■■ A proxy server owned by an ISP that caches frequently accessed pages will show
up as one unique visitor even though it represents hundreds, if not thousands, of users.
You can put a no-cache directive on your pages, but it works only if the proxy pays
attention to it. And using such a directive may slow your site for some users.
■■ In the home, it is very common to have more than one person using the same
computer. You may have three different people visiting from one IP address.
■■ People visit from different places: from home, work, school, or from a laptop at the
coffee shop. What looks like four unique visitors may actually be only one.
■■ People on dial-up change IP addresses almost every time they log in. If a person
visits every day from a different IP, that person looks like 20 or 30 people, depending on
how the ISP assigns IP addresses. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.21)
………………………………………………………………………..
Chapter 3: Yes! More AWStats! (Pages 23-40)
Monthly History
The Monthly History has two parts: a bar chart and a table of values. The values in the
chart and the numbers in the table correspond to the Summary information for each
month. Each column of the chart has a total at the bottom that appears on the earlier –
Year– Summary. As with the –Year– Summary, the total of Unique Visitors is not
accurate. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.24)
Days and Hours
The Days of Month, plus Days of Week and Hours reports, all answer the same basic
questions: “Is traffic to the web site cyclical?” and “Did any special events influence
traffic?” Days of Month gives you a daily breakdown, lets you compare against the
average, and shows how AWStats arrived at the Summary numbers. (Ledford & Tyler,
2007, p.25)
, Robots and Spiders
One particularly important kind of visitor that is not a person is an indexing spider or
web crawler. The Robots/Spiders report lists the various named and unnamed but
identified web crawlers that have run their sticky little legs all over your pages. Named
spiders are known robots from known entities: Google, Inktomi, MSN, Yahoo, and so
forth. Other spiders are not known, but when they hit a special file on the top level of the
web site called robots.txt, the server marks them as spiders. Robots.txt tells spiders
where they are allowed to go and what they are allowed to index. For example, if you
didn’t want the pictures on your web site indexed, you could put a line in your robots.txt
to make the whole images directory off limits to spiders. Most good spiders pay
attention to these directives, but there’s no money-back guarantee. (Ledford & Tyler,
2007, p.28)
Connect to Site from . . .
The “Connect to site from” report has two sections: top and bottom.
First is the traffic (pages and hits) coming from people who type your URL—direct
addresses—or use a bookmark. These are your regular customers or readers, your
core traffic. They know where your site is from memory or they have your site
ISBN: 978-0-470-17501-9.
…………..
This Book is Organized in following parts
Part One: Basic Analytics (chapter 1, 2 and 3)
Part Two: Setting Up Google Analytics (Chapter 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9)
Part Three: Dashboards (Chapter 10 and 11)
Part Four: All Reports: Visitors (Chapter 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18)
Part Five: All Reports: Traffic Sources (Chapter (Chapter 18, 19 and 20)
Part Six: All Reports: Content (Chapter 21)
Part Seven: All Reports: Goals (Chapter 22)
Part Eight: All Reports: E-Commerce (Chapter 23, 24 and 25)
………………………………………………………….
Chapter 1: Why Analytics? (Pages 3-8)
Having web site statistics is one thing. Understanding what they mean and what you
should do with them is another thing altogether. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.3)
If you have Windows-based hosting, you may have a Windows-specific stats package,
or your host may use the Windows version of one of the open source stats packages. If
you have hosting on a Linux web server running Apache (and about 60 percent of web
servers run Linux and Apache), you’ll most likely have Analog, Webalizer, or AWStats,
and you may have all three. These software packages are open source under various
versions of the GNU Public License (GPL). web analytics are site stats on steroids.
Stats give you numbers. Analytics give you information. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.4)
Analytics is software that generates metrics. Metrics are measurements. There are all
sorts of possible web site metrics—measurements you can take—about how many
times files are accessed, how many unique IP addresses access the site, how many
pages are served, and so on. Analytics can calculate the most popular pages, how long
the typical person stays on the typical page, the percentage of people who “bounce” or
leave the site from a particular page, and thus the percentage of people who explore the
site more deeply. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.5)
Analytics is a tool for you to use to understand how visitors behave when they visit your
web site. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.7)
…………………………………………………………….
,Chapter 2: Analytics and AWStats (Pages 9-22)
AWStats (Advanced Web Statistics) is an open source log analyzer written in Perl that
can use a variety of log formats and runs on a variety of operating systems. (Ledford &
Tyler, 2007, p.9)
Google Analytics and AWStats have different features with different strengths and
weaknesses. There are two main differences between Google Analytics and AWStats.
First, AWStats is primarily a site statistics program. AWStats counts more than it
calculates. It has far fewer metrics and capabilities than Google Analytics. It’s intended
to be a simpler sort of program — nothing wrong with that. Google Analytics is intended
from the get-go to be a business strength program. It calculates as much as counts and
gives you metrics that, as a business person, you’ll want. Second, AWStats is a log
analyzer. Google Analytics relies on cookies and JavaScript (referred to as “scripting”
from here on out). This has several farranging implications. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007,
p.10)
The AWStats window has a left-hand and a right-hand frame. The righthand frame
shows the reports. The left-hand frame shows the domain name for the site statistics
you’re viewing followed by a text link navigation list. You can go directly to sections of
the main report from any flush-left link. Secondary reports, left-indented with a tiny
AWStats icon, replace the main report in the right-hand frame when you click the
navigation link. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.11)
The dashboard appears at the top of the main report. AWStats notes the time of the last
update. Most web hosts update in the middle of the night. The time listed is on the
server’s time zone and is not necessarily your time zone. You can force an update by
clicking the Update Now link. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.12)
Number of Visits
Number of Visits has two key assumptions: How long a visit is and how much time has
to pass between page loads to make one person have two visits? Fortunately, there are
industry standards — after all, this isn’t 1997. A visit is as long as it is. As long as the
visitor keeps clicking from page to page, it’s still one visit. However, when the user stops
clicking for 30 minutes, the visit ends. If the user starts clicking again, it’s a new visit.
,Thirty minutes is the industry-standard timeout for visits. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.19-
20)
Unique Visitors
The big problem with counting unique visitors is that it’s impossible to figure out from
server logs who’s unique and who’s a visitor. Figure 2-7 deals with this problem. There
are caveats aplenty here because you’re counting visits from unique IP addresses, not
actual people:
■■ Any sort of local area network connected by a single Internet gateway may have
several users with the same apparent IP address.
■■ A proxy server owned by an ISP that caches frequently accessed pages will show
up as one unique visitor even though it represents hundreds, if not thousands, of users.
You can put a no-cache directive on your pages, but it works only if the proxy pays
attention to it. And using such a directive may slow your site for some users.
■■ In the home, it is very common to have more than one person using the same
computer. You may have three different people visiting from one IP address.
■■ People visit from different places: from home, work, school, or from a laptop at the
coffee shop. What looks like four unique visitors may actually be only one.
■■ People on dial-up change IP addresses almost every time they log in. If a person
visits every day from a different IP, that person looks like 20 or 30 people, depending on
how the ISP assigns IP addresses. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.21)
………………………………………………………………………..
Chapter 3: Yes! More AWStats! (Pages 23-40)
Monthly History
The Monthly History has two parts: a bar chart and a table of values. The values in the
chart and the numbers in the table correspond to the Summary information for each
month. Each column of the chart has a total at the bottom that appears on the earlier –
Year– Summary. As with the –Year– Summary, the total of Unique Visitors is not
accurate. (Ledford & Tyler, 2007, p.24)
Days and Hours
The Days of Month, plus Days of Week and Hours reports, all answer the same basic
questions: “Is traffic to the web site cyclical?” and “Did any special events influence
traffic?” Days of Month gives you a daily breakdown, lets you compare against the
average, and shows how AWStats arrived at the Summary numbers. (Ledford & Tyler,
2007, p.25)
, Robots and Spiders
One particularly important kind of visitor that is not a person is an indexing spider or
web crawler. The Robots/Spiders report lists the various named and unnamed but
identified web crawlers that have run their sticky little legs all over your pages. Named
spiders are known robots from known entities: Google, Inktomi, MSN, Yahoo, and so
forth. Other spiders are not known, but when they hit a special file on the top level of the
web site called robots.txt, the server marks them as spiders. Robots.txt tells spiders
where they are allowed to go and what they are allowed to index. For example, if you
didn’t want the pictures on your web site indexed, you could put a line in your robots.txt
to make the whole images directory off limits to spiders. Most good spiders pay
attention to these directives, but there’s no money-back guarantee. (Ledford & Tyler,
2007, p.28)
Connect to Site from . . .
The “Connect to site from” report has two sections: top and bottom.
First is the traffic (pages and hits) coming from people who type your URL—direct
addresses—or use a bookmark. These are your regular customers or readers, your
core traffic. They know where your site is from memory or they have your site
