What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytica or GA is a free service provided by Google which helps you get detailed statistics about your website visitors. This website statistics service it is the most widely used at around 57% of the ten thousands most popular websites. The product is aimed to help marketers get detailed statistics about internet traffic.
GA is flexible but powerful and contains easy-to-use features allowing you to see and analyze your traffic data in an completely new way. This is the enterprise-class web analytics solution which enables rich insights about website traffic and marketing effectiveness. With GA you can create higher converting websites and in the same time you are better prepared to write more targeted ads and increase your marketing initiatives. Google Analytics is delivered as a free service and the premium version is available for free also.
How does Google Analythics work?
Google Analytics is implemented with “ page tags “, and is referred as the GATC or Google Analytics Tracking Code with hidden snipped of JavaScript code added to the website that needs to be tracked. This code works like a beacon, collecting visitors data and sending it back to Google data collection servers for further processing. Data processing is hourly made but it can take several hours in terms of real time. Anyway, a comment on web analytics blog left by a Google employee revealed that not all data is processed for half a day after collection.
For proper functioning the GATC loads a file from the Google webserver and then establishes variables with the user's account number. The file also known as the ga.js is typically 18 KB in size and is downloaded one time at the beginning of the visit and it will be cached throughout the session. A visitor that has earlier visited any other website with this code implemented, will also have the file cashed on their system, as all websites that implement Google Analytics with the ga.js code are using the same master file from Google.
The Google Analytics Tracking Code sets first party cookies on any visitor's computer in addition to broadcasting information to Google servers allowing anonymous info storage whenever the visitor has visited the website before, how long he stood on the site and what is the referrer site or campaign the visitor came from a search engine, keywords, banner, email etc.
In addition Google allows Google Analytics to be applied to mobile websites. The Mobile Package includes server-side codes that use PHP, JavaServer Pages ASP.NET for the server side language.