10 Things I learned from Using Google Analytics

May 27, 2020 — Jt Spratley

First published on August 1, 2016

Google Analytics was the first analytics service I used on my blog. Keep in mind I’m not an experienced professional in any relative field and this is NOT meant to sway your opinion of the analytics service . . . much.

  1. A lot of sites use it, meaning if an internet surfer has it blocked via extensions, Ghostery and Privacy Badger for example, your tracker is halted just as the countless others. However. . .
  2. It is a great application to learn because it’s an industry standard right now.
  3. Because it’s the industry standard, and Google, I’ll have to work harder to find a worthy alternative to use and recommend to others. Clicky has a decent free version and easy-to-use WordPress plugin but I could only see the last 31 days of history. I’ll play with Mixpanel and Piwik next.
  4. Google has training for getting started with Google Analytics at analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com.
  5. Internet search engines Yandex, Baidu, and MyWay exist.
  6. People still use Ask, Yahoo, and AOL to search the web.
  7. Analytics can easily be used to track a specific user with filters for gender, age group, operating system, type of browser, and even location (down to the zip code). Still don’t think DuckDuckGo is a great alternative search engine? Oh yeah . . .
  8. I have no idea how many people use DuckDuckGo or Startpage. I’ve never seen these two in the search engine results.
  9. There’s lots of spam in the results which need to be cleaned up before getting accurate results. I found many articles regarding the issue but didn’t complete one and can’t recommend one.
  10. Though Analytics can help immensely with understanding the “what”, “who”, “when”, “why”, “where”, and “how” of internet traffic, in-depth online tracking is easy, and therefore, more dangerous if in the wrong hands than I initially thought.

Next time, I’ll ensure I write the post while I’m still using the service so I can use original images and videos as necessary.

What are your thoughts? What did I get wrong ? E-mail, maybe?

Tags: web-development-and-design, IT

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