Google Re-Opens Analytics Public Account Signup

On August 15. 2006 Google Analytics announced that it has once again made its web analytics product available to the world for free!

Since about one week after the launch of Google Analytics last November, the system has been limited to an invitation-only signup model due to the massive demand for the product (hundreds of thousands of signups in a few days). Given the demand, it was taking weeks to get an invitation. The Google Analytics engineering team has been working hard to increase capacity, which they’ve steadily done.

The new availability means no more wait. If you want Google Analytics you can get it – this very moment if you so like. If you’ve been on the waitlist, forget about waiting! Cruise over to www.google.com/analytics/ and begin the signup process.

Once you’ve created your account, keep these configuration best practices in mind:

:: Before you charge off and tag your site, make sure your tag is configured for your site. The default tag won’t always work properly, depending on how your site is structured.

:: Once tags have been placed on all your pages, create a second profile based on the existing profile you’ve just setup. This will allow you to always have a backup profile in case a filter you apply doesn’t work the way you intended.

:: Create filters to exclude visits to your site by you and other people within your organization. This is called “internal traffic” and will skew statistics about visitor behavior. Even though you love your site, knowing you visit it 437 times a day isn’t going to help your web analyst make great, actionable discoveries.

:: Create filters to ignore any tracking data that isn’t from your website. Caching sites, some search engines, and translation sites can introduce small amounts of “junk” data to your reports. It’s best to avert this by setting up include filters on your site’s hostnames.

:: Last, but not least, create goals and goal funnel steps to measure conversion rates for your site. Specify a dollar value for each goal, or integrate ecommerce data straight from your site (that will require some extra programming, though).

You can read about things like multiple domains, sub-domains, filters, goals, ecommerce integration and other technical considerations at the Google Analytics help site, or shoot me an email if you have questions about how you should configure your Google Analytics tags. POP is a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant – so if you need technical support or training for Google Analytics we’re here to help!