Google Analytics (GA) is a free and powerful tool that lets website owners measure how their website is performing and study how visitors behave when they land on a given webpage. In terms of measuring website performance, Google Analytics is an industry-standard and used by companies, big and small, across the board.

Google Analytics can show key engagement data reaching back as long as the webmaster or owner has had Google Analytics installed on their website, allowing the site owner to see trends over time and measure the efficacy of digital marketing activities like SEO, PPC or social media.

How Google Analytics Works

Google Analytics allows users to add filters that will only show traffic that arrived at a website from particular channels, organic search traffic for instance. It also allows users to compare data from two or more years or one or more channels side by side, enabling trends to be seen.

In addition, Google Analytics allows you to hone in on specific pages and break this traffic down by channel (organic, paid, social, etc). 

Google Analytics also makes it easy to define “goals” based on specific events to measure how many people do what businesses and marketers want them to do. Over time, Google Analytics can show useful data on which pages contribute the most towards these specific goals allowing businesses to adjust their strategies accordingly. 

Google Analytics makes it easy to add an actual monetary value to a set of these predefined goals. If one goal is worth more to a business than another one, then attributing a value creates a distinction that businesses can measure in financial terms.

Google Analytics has a host of other features, which we’ve explored in a lot more detail in our comprehensive business guide to using Google Analytics.

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