When did you last login into Google Analytics?
When was the last time you logged in, into your Google analytics account?
How often do you check your Google analytics? What all do you track? Do you find it any useful for betterment or monitoring of your site performance? If yes, how? If no, why?
What are your views?
I do a lot of experiments on my websites and often check Google Analytics to see what worked and what not. Some of my recent experiements include creating a separate keyword for some of the keywords I am targetting and then finally consolidate those sites to a main site.
Analytics has been really helpful.
Sounds like a very interesting experiment Tony! So you basically use it for tracking keywords.. Did this experiment of yours bear fruits, how did it all go about?
GA is more than an experiment. If used effectively, it can change the way you blog. You can actually work to build your website based on viewer behaviour.
I log in atleast once every day even though I know that I will find the same things daily: the same average hits and the same traffic sources.
It helps us in finding out those sources that bring in a lot of traffic so that we can concentrate on them more.
But the sources too wont change everyday, as you have said... so then why do you log in everyday? What is the basic purpose behind it? Do you keep certain aims for your site and then check to see if or not you have manged to accomplish them..
With a hope that something would increase. Hope and nothing else.... The actual reason is that I have lots of free time and I really don't know how to use it, 
so I simply log in to my gmail, yahoomail, Blogger and GA one by one.
Though I don't keep any such goals as such, having a look at those stats gives me confidence. It also tells me which posts were better than the other by looking at the avergae time spent and most of the time, the highest time is spent on those posts which I myself have liked.
I think that for normal purposes, logging in once a week is sufficient, unless one has invested a lot of money in hios bloga nd needs to earn that back somehow.
Yes you are right, it does feels nice to see all those numbers but it could be depressing for some people too, to not see their statistics going up and instead getting static. Its good that you take things in positive spirit.. I guess thats one big key to success
BTW, You forgot IndiBlogger in the first para 
I hardly log in to my account, there is way too much info, almost to the point of overload and i feel quite lost sometimes, hence the question!
So you log in quite often.. Which country you have most hits from? And did you consciously anytime blog using that country name to garner more hits to your site?
Arti, no I didnt use Country name as keyword, but if you have observed, my blog name is Indianomics :) so its all about India. I get the most hits from India, over 95% with USA being second highest.
About how to analyze data..
Analytics helps you to understand and redefine your targets. If you have set a goal for yourself about your reach in a particular region (geographicaly or by subject) you will know what you have achieved for that period.
Here is one more thing that I can share with you. I also blog about events that are associated with other countries. For example, my spoof post on Fiat and Ferrari using Tata Nano as base for their next gen vehicles got many hits from many countries. There was a dutch forum who hijacked the image from my blog and posted it on their forum, some motoring based blogs stole it too, within a week from when I published my post. So startegize your posts in a such a manner that same subject can have some importance in other countries.
Wow, that is a very intelligent blog title... I should have kept something like that too since mine is focussed on India as well.. And one of your most searched keyword has a city name too, if i am not mistaken.., no wonder then that you love tracking that part in GA ;)
Anyways, I am sorry to hear all about your image thefts.. I can see how GA can help in such cases then, we can know of who is dropping in on our blogs.. from where, on which post and using which keyword (right?). So that can give us an idea of what exactly is making our posts click for the outside world. Many thanks for sharing all the info Hemal, much appreaciate :)
I have heard of many acts like DMCA to prevent theft issues, I am sure you knew of them then... don't they apply to forums?
It is always so saddening to hear originality being stamped in such a way...
Good, even I have heard it is a good tool.. but am still trying to figure out how to use it to my advantage 
There is so much toi explore there, there is even an experiment section!!!
And an in-page analysis!!
Advantage No.1: Statistics. It tells you how much your blog is visited and from where. This is in particular useful to guage two things. One the amount of revenue your site can get, two to see viability of the website. By viability, i mean, to see how much are you getting in return for your investment (here time) which helps you to prioritize your activites on the website.
No.2: Targetting: Analytics helps you to esitmate your efforts in one goal your have set for yourself. It may be your reach in a particular region (geographicaly or by subject) or your returns from a region. It tells you what you have achieved for that period.
No.3: Search & Keywords preformance: It helps us to learn how our keywords are performing on search and how search is helping you reach to your end user. You can find out the keywords that are relevant and start using them more often knowing that you are getting good hits via those keywords. Also, it helps us analyze which keywords are not performing optimal to your expectations and work towards it.
No.4: Platform, Connectivity: For most bloggers, it wont make a big impact but other wise for a website it does. For example, if you want to check what % of users use Flash on their browsers. This helps you decide whether you want to create a flash based intro or a flash based application for creating a dynamic application. The same stands true for Operating systems, but it is not that important these days as most advance browsers behave almost same in terms of delivering your content. However, your Operating systes are important to know when you want to check Mobile OS. Which helps you to categorize and calculate your visitors from Mobile Browsers. Opera on PC/Mac can be confused with Opera on mobile and hence this parameter helps.
Also, it helps in deciding your target audience. For example, lets take the latest technology on web is HTML5 with Javascript. If you wanna start redesigning your website on HTML5, you might as well check what your users are using. If 90% of your users are using th latest browsers, it makes sense to go ahead. If lesss than 10% of your visitors are usign latest browsers, it wont help as others wont be able to use the website functionality you intend to develop.
Knowing Connectivity is important as well, to gauge what size of webpage your users will be able to download fast. If you have more thna 50% of users on dailup with 28KBPS speed, it wont help having a website that is heavily loaded with graphics.
All in all, analytics is used to target your website to a sect of users with importance to multiple aspects and you working towards achieving your targets.
Phew! now that I have written it so long here, I can go ahead and create a new post on my blog!
*A big round of applause* Superb Hemal! Your reply is going to help a lot of nerds here, including me! I am so glad I started this thread, I am learning a lot here :)
THANK YOU very much 
Very true Hemal.. Also, one person's experience when shared helps others who are in distress facing similar problems... Your deep insights and experiences have enriched this thread and you labelling your article as layman terms is your humility.. you dont have an iota of an idea how much it is of benefit to complete ignorants like me.. Thanks Hemal
just work with it. It's phenomenal. Even though my blog has very few readers, I can still track what they spend time on. Start with these:
1. Visitor time on site/page - if any user spends less than 1-2 minutes on your site, you may as well ignore them and focus on the people who spend more time reading your posts. Well, that's what I do.
2. Individual page views- daily is pointless, but periodic is helpful to know you popular posts. It will help to understand what are your "pillar posts" and how you can use them to promote other parts of your blog
3. Referrals: This one is obvious but I will still explain it for beginners. Use this section to understand what referrers are sending you users and what keywords are people using to find your blog.
I study my overall performance while ignoring "bounce visits". Bounce=visitor who only sees ONE page and then leaves. If I can't get someone to stay, then I can't understand them and they can't understand me. No point working on that relationship. But if someone visits and sees 3+ pages, then I study their visits and page views.
Anyone can use GA effectively to learn about their user base and then decide if they want to focus their blog on what their readers prefer to read. etc etc etc.
forgot to answer: I check it daily and spend a couple of hours a week on it in total.
if any user spends less than 1-2 minutes on your site
How do we know the time spent by each user. It displays only the average time spent, isn't it?
@ Ranjith
You can actually create lists using "Advanced Segments" by adding "Custom Segments". There you can set your parameters.
For Example, one of the segments I created tracks the following
+[TimeOnSite>3 minutes] +[Pageviews>=3] -[Mac]
The above tracks People who spent over 3 minutes on my site and saw a minimum of 3 pages and DO NOT use a Mac. By asking GA to only show analytics of people who fit the "description" I am able to track them.
Do note that the above is just the title I have given to the segment since I track different things and so have created many segment lists. Creating a new custom segment is just as simple as click and drag... literally.
Most people will be very surprised to know their "actual" readership if they start tracking. I get 60-70 hits on one particular page daily but that page has a 95% bounce rate. So effectively, by my standards, the page only gets 3-4 readers a day even though it has 60-70 "pageviews".
I actually have another thread someone on Indi with metrics tracking info. Maybe you can have a look at that. I have also posted a couple of links from some other sites which help to understand some examples of what to track.
@Hemal That is very good Hemal, you help poeple wherever you can.. And abt English, pls dont bother, as long as you can convey your thoughts.. the language can never be stupid and you do that quite well :)
@Rumbaho Another big round of applause for you as well :)
WOW! I did get your view, thanks for putting them ahead in a simple manner.. GA is helpful for the growth of your blog, i had read and now am understanding how! After reading all the above replies, I look forward to checking GA more often now :)
I would like to tell another thing regarding traffic sources from IndiBlogger's forum: GA does not record the thread from which we have got traffic. It simply displays http://www.indiblogger.in/forum/topic.php? whereas Bloggers analytics displays the entire link http://www.indiblogger.in/forum/topic.php?id=0000 or something like that
No tool is perfect and comes without any loopholes, can we conclude this from your above observations?
I am not sure but i think that the prtoblem is with IB URL's structure. Generraly ? is not used in standard URL's. For example, after you comment on a blogger blog, you will be shown your comment instaed of the starting of the page by using ?comment......
@Ranjith Oh, never observed all these things.. the next time I comment somewhere, will look this up..
Nice conclusion of the debate Arti, i just try to check once a way, total counter statistics and source of traffic, thankfully 777.seo has now vanished. I believe adjusting the keywords makes lot of difference to traffic. Unfortunately Indiblogger is not featuring in referring sites, surprised
Yes, may be true, SEO related thingy...
And IndiBlogger does feature for me in my GA dashboard... I am actually amazed to know it is not one of the referring sites for you..
Point 3 in Hemal's above reply throws some light on this.. check it out Umeshji :)
I use google analytics mainly to analyze and understand my blog better, I don't go into goals and target settings..
I use it mainly to check the sources of visit, referring sites, no of people visiting, most visited topics, most popular keywords.
It gives me an understanding on what people are liking and what is more popular. (Some times simple words generate such a lot of traffic and one of my posts of 2007 is an all time favorite of all still topping the list for highest no of visits).
Another important point is how much time people spend on your blog and where (Through Indi, many people click on the link, visit your blog for a second and vote for the post - Not a good method, I personally feel!)
Can also compare the visitors trend and loyalty with a past period and that is an important point to know how well your blog is remembered and frequented by your visitors!
There's lot more of features... (I too agree that GA is not perfect, but still a very good tool to use). It has enlightened me in many ways
Thank you Santosh for the detailed reply. Yes, GA does have a lot to offer and many a times it is enlightening as in your case, for some others it can also be confusing.. as in my case 
But, on a serious note, yes, i am basically liking the idea of visitor trend and loyalty. We can focus more on these posts and their linkings, to drive more traffic to our blogs, am i right?
everyday anytime plus other analytics
@Chaitanya What do you track? How is it helpful? Does it help in increasing traffic to your blog?
Hemal, Rumbaho, Thanks a lot. I learned a lot, even though I have been using and trying to study the GA data for a long time, and regularly. Just wanted to check if everyone here is always convinced about the correctness of GA numbers. I know that it is a little behind the real time stats that blogger stats show, and that it possibly filters out bot traffic. But I frequently have a situation where the tracking code is being read fine, but the data being reported is way less than what is normal or what I can deduce even if I go with the amount of comments. Does this happen with anyone else? Or am I doing something wrong.
@Rumbaho, I have been using these reports for ages and never used a custom report!! Thanks for your pointer, I have started creating custom segments, and they are very useful. Thank God for the brainy people in the world!!
Mate, my thoughts on your question are simple....
... If the data seems less, don't worry about it unless you get over, say, 2000 visitors a day. Err.... make that 5000 visitors per day. If you get anything less than that then IMO your blog is not significant enough to warrant any concern on the missing visitor numbers. Simple thoughts, no?
You are probably right that there is also a good chance that your blog is showing higher pageviews that GA since it is not filtering out bots but GA recognizes the spiders (from Google and other Search engines) successfully and removes them from the count.
If you still worry about GA hiding your visitors then just have another look at the simple thoughts mentioned above. :o)
I have assumed that you are NOT getting thousands of visitors daily. If I'm wrong, ignore my suggestions and go and get yourself another analytics options which can run in parallel with GA. There are many such free or paid options available.
And I'm glad you have adopted Custom Reports. They are really helpful :o)
5000 a day is a distant dream, but dreams do come true if you believe in them and work in that direction. Thanks a lot. Will now set a new goal in GA for that.
Not very obsessed with every feature of Google Analytics, but I do log in once a day to see what's happening. stats n what not
Once a day is still ok, just shows that you do find some meaning in them and as we have seen above, tracking them is indeed a good way to take your blog forward
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