Introduction to Google Analytics - Google AdWords Learning Center

Learning how users interact with your website and using that knowledge to make improvements is key to building an effective online business. Google Analytics helps answer difficult questions such as:

Why and at what points are visitors abandoning your shopping cart?

Is your website design driving people away?

Which marketing initiatives are the most effective for your site?

Where are your site visitors coming from?

What do people do while visiting your site?

What keywords do people use to find your site?

Google Analytics reports give you thorough, easy-to-understand visual reports that:

Track e-commerce metrics such as revenue, conversion rates and ROI
Define variables about users as segments and analyze the behavior of each segment
Help you understand how visitors navigate throughout your website

One example report is the Traffic Sources Overview report. For a selected date range, it shows:

An overview of the different kinds of traffic to your website
The percentage of Direct Traffic vs Search Engine Traffic
Top Traffic Sources
Top Keywords driving traffic

When you're ready to install Google Analytics, paste the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) anywhere in to your page's HTML code. Place the tracking code at the bottom of your page's code (directly before the closing </body> tag) to avoid any possible issues with your page loading at a slower rate. If you use certain advanced Analytics features or want to ensure the most accurate tracking, you can place the code between the opening <head> and closing </head> tags of each page in your site code.

We recommend you review the Setting Up Google Analytics topic later in this section. It covers the 10 basic steps for setting up your account.