Hey there, Anyone use Google Analytics? I just started, and I have a question: Do you have to put the Analytics code on every page of your site, or just on the index page? It might be a stupid question, but I wonder if, when you put the code on every page, won't each visit equal one pageview? Thanks in advance!
Yes, you must to put code on every page you want to count stats. The system will manually know and separete visits from pageviews. One visit = 1 or more page views. For example, if you get SE traffic, you get also directly to sub pages, how do you know that, if you won't add code to page.
what if you have two instances of urchin.js on the same page? Will that skew the results or can Google recognize that?
No that was not the question. You need to reread. I'm wanting to know if my friends web guy did this to inflate his stats.
Each page you want tracked. Google cannot track traffic to pages your code isn't on. For larger scale sites this can be hard. For PHP sites it can be as easy as adding the code to a footer file or something. Google Analytics is very good about only tracking real people and not tracking them twice. They even track the same person coming back as only one hit as long as it is in a certain amount of time(hours). In most cases the traffic noted in analytics will be lower than other stat programs and this is again because Google only tracks real uniques. BTW it is a awesome program. It is wort $500/month.
Thus far I have found analytics to be quite accurate while I have a number of include files on some sites. Agreeing with visio, they seem to filter out duplication to prevent the "inflated" numbers you might get otherwise. IMHO
I like to use it to buy sites. Awstats can be manipulated but it is much harder to manipulate Google analytics results.
Thanks for the info. So why would this guy put the tracking code twice on each page? that just slows things down, no?
Accurate is a relative term for analytics, lol. Some of their terms and numbers require serious deciphering. Here's a novel reason your friend might have put the analytics javascript twice on his page - he's not as savvy as he thinks he is? He wanted to make sure his code was being tracked and not blocked by some other working of his page? The best way to tell if analytics can be fooled (and I'm sure they thought of this) is to paste the code 10 times into your page and see whether your results go through the roof!
Wait a second! I do not remember Google asking to place any code on any page to activate analytics tool. It just asked to sign up, add the URL and wait for 24-36 hours for the tool to accumulate data. What code are we talking about?
I put the analytics code in every page but my index page because it redirects to my home page. I couldn't understand why my home page keywords weren't showing up in "overall keyword conversion". Added the code and all my top keywords magically appeared. Ooops.
dude you gotta put the code google gives you for that domain right above the <body> tag....how else do you think they could track things???? go thru the steps again and follow the instructions..you'll see the code
Sorry, I obviously, forgot, I do have a code on the index page, but nothing beyond that. As I understand from this discussion, my challenge is to place the same code on hundreds of internal HTML pages.
If you have hundreds of internal html pages, then your site is not dynamically built and good luck. If your pages are dynamically built then just put the code once in the header or footer file.
Yes, the entire site is built using Dreamweaver over the course of almost ten years. I am now thinking there might be a plug-in or a script of some sort, which would automatically add code into the documents. After all, it is a repeating task and Dreamweaver does have find and replace HTML code feature.
My friend isn't savvy at all A company he hired did this, and I was wondering if they were doing it to puff up their reports. I will set a test of this up to see. Even if it doesn't inflate stats, it's still could be slowing things down right? Google says its supposed to be placed at the end of the body, like right above the </body> tag. Placing it up high like that runs a possible risk of it not working right. It actually is supposed to go above the </body> tag.