I hope the mods sticky this thread. Google Analytics is a useful tool but it there are still many things to learn about how it functions and ways it will benefit webmasters who want to drive traffic to their websites. So all things related to Google Analytics, post them here, please.
The mods won't stick this empty thread but anyway... What I would like to know is does Google use my Analytics stats to penalize my sites?
Ok here's a question: I have some articles at ezinearticles.com, and I can see the referrals that come from them in GA, but there is another set of referrals from i.ezinearticles.com, does anyone know what that is all about?
I've observed that Google Analytics counts my work within my web office as direct traffic to my website. Has anyone else noticed this wrt their websites? And if the answer is yes, is there a way to modify or refine the way Google Analytics counts visitors?
Referrals is traffic that comes from a site that links to your site. That is, if you post on a forum or have your url in an article, if a reader clicks on the link that visitor will be taken to your website. In your case it may have something to do with how your articles were indexed. This is a good post. I'm curious to know what others have to say about it.
What exactly determines whether a visitor bounces? Do visitors that bounce still count under your unique visitors?
Zex, what exactly do you mean? Like using bounce rate to determine whether they should lower your search rank? I've wondered that myself.
Unique visits are those first time visitors irrespective of whether or not they bounce. You can have a unique visitor spend X minutes on your site and a bounce percentage will still be assigned to him/her. The same thing with a return visitor (this would be anyone who returns to your site after the initial visit); regardless of the amount of time they spend on your site for that particular visit, they will still count toward your bounce percentage. If you get a loyal visitor using the same computer then their bounce rate will gradually decrease as the analysis will show that they are using the same computer on subsequent visits. You can also have returning visitors who may even use a different computer on one or more return visits. In this case even if they are a returning visitor ie a person who returns to your site, if they are using a different computer to access it, the bounce rate percentage for that given computer will be higher.
Can Google Analytics give you the IP of site visitors? I know it provides data on ISPs but I'd like to know if they are sophisticated enough to provide the IP addresses of visitors.
Google Analytics is by far the best, but it is lacking much of what I would like to have... So that is why I use more than one tracking system!