How Does Google Analytics Work?
Google Analytics is a free Web analytics service that provides statistics and necessary analytical tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing purposes. The service is available to anyone with a Google account.
Google Analytics features include:
• Data visualization tools including a dashboard, scorecards and motion charts, which display changes in data over time.
• Segmentation for analysis of subsets, such as conversions.
• Custom reports.
• Email-based sharing and communication.
• Integration with other Google products, such as AdWords, Public Data Explorer, and Website Optimizer.
Google Analytics geared toward small and medium-sized retail websites. The service has limitations that make it less suited to more complex websites and larger enterprises. For example, the system collects data through a JavaScript page tag inserted in the code of pages the user wants to collect data. The page tag functions as a Web bug to gather visitor information. However, because it’s reliant on cookies, the system can’t collect data for users who have disabled them. Google also uses sampling in its reports rather than analyzing all available data.
It can provide you with advanced metrics and data about your website traffic, but many beginners consider its data collection and reporting very complex.
How Does Google Analytics Collect Data?
It uses a small piece of Javascript tracking code to collect data about your website visitors and their interactions on your website. After you create your GA account, you need to add the script on your website. MonsterInsights helps you accurately and easily add this to your WordPress site and makes sure that it’s sending all interactions to it. Once it’s setup, this will drop a cookie in the user’s browser for your website. It will help to track every interaction that the user performs on your site.
Interactions are all the types of actions users perform on your website. They can be as simple as loading a page or something more specific like clicking a link or a video play button.
With each user interaction on your website, the tracking code sends information to Analytics about your users and their interactions on your website. The data sent by the tracking code is called a hit.
A hit is a URL string with parameters of useful information about your users which looks something like the code. The URL string shown above passes some helpful information to Analytics about the user that triggered the hit.
It can include information like:
1. The language of the user’s browser
2. The name of the page they’re viewing
3. User’s device and its screen resolution
4. The Analytics ID
Moreover, Google Analytics widens the collected data using other sources like IP address, server-logfiles, and other ad-serving data. Using the expanded additional data, it can understand things like a user’s location, age, gender, browser, operating system, source/medium that referred them to the site, etc. The information passed through the hits varies by different types of user interactions.
There are 4 most common types of hits:
- Pageview hit: This is the most common type of hit sent to Analytics. It’s triggered when a user loads a webpage with the tracking code on your site.
- The event hit: An event hit is sent when a user interacts with a particular element on your website. It tracks actions like clicking a video play button, a specific URL, a product carousel, or submitting a contact form.
- Transaction hit: Also called an eCommerce hit. A transaction hit passes data about the user’s eCommerce purchases such as products purchased, transaction IDs, and stock keeping units (SKUs).
- Social hits that pass information about your social media likes, shares, or tweet data.