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Top 5 Google Analytics Reports for Bloggers

By Gregory Ciotti 30 Comments Reading Time: 3 minutes

As most bloggers know, Google Analytics is a powerful (and free) way to track your blog’s web metrics. Unfortunately, it was designed with AdWords advertisers in mind, so it comes with a lot more information than most bloggers need. Cluttered as it is with campaign and landing page reports, you might be tempted to look no further than the dashboard.

Don’t be daunted! Google Analytics is a veritable goldmine of information about your blog. Here is a list of the reports that you may actually find useful (and where to find them).

1. Referring Sites (under Traffic Sources)

Especially important if your blog is heavy into social media sites like Digg and Reddit, this report shows you where your visitors are coming from.

googleanalyticsreferring.gif

2. Keywords (under Traffic Sources)

If your blog is blessed with (or engineered for) high rankings on a term, this report will tell you what that term is and just how many visitors it’s producing.

googleanalyticskeywords.gif

3. Content by Title (under Content)

We all want to know what posts are being read and this report will tell you. It’s worth paying attention to the “Time on Page” and “Bounce Rate” columns, since a short time on page and high bounce rate might indicate a page driving visitors away from your blog. A quick look at this report is also a great way to generate that “Most Popular Posts” list.

googleanalyticstitle.gif

4. New vs. Returning (under Visitors)

Everybody wants to know if they’ve got fans, and this report tells you just that. Granted, it doesn’t tell you exactly how many people you have subscribed to your feed. Google’s got Reader, though, and it’s about to buy up Feedburner, so it probably won’t be long before there’s a subscription report, too.

googleanalyticsreturningvis.gif

5. Map Overlay (under Visitors)

You’ll probably have to drill down to the country level for it to be useful, but knowing where your readers are in the world can be important information. You may discover that your audience is more international or localized than you would have guessed, allowing you to better target the content and timing of your posts. Are all of your visitors in California? Time your post for 8:00 PST so it’s at the top of their feed readers in the morning.

googleanalyticsmapoverlay.gif

Perhaps best of all, the new Google Analytics interface allows you to save these reports to your dashboard (using the “Add to Dashboard” button at the top left), so you can still be lazy without losing sight of potentially useful data.

Top 5 Google Analytics Reports for Bloggers Photo

About Gregory Ciotti

Hi, I'm Gregory Ciotti. I currently lead the content marketing team that manages Shopify's ecommerce and retail publications.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Avatar of Through the Lens of Kimberly Gauthier, Kimberly Gauthier PhotographyThrough the Lens of Kimberly Gauthier, Kimberly Gauthier Photography says

    at

    This is fantastic! I just Googled “google analytics reports” and this was one of the first links to pop up. Since I’m familiar with your blog, it’s the only one I clicked on and this is exactly what I need.

    Thank you!

    Reply
  2. Avatar of tomtom says

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    Does google analytics give you a way to track what has user clicked in sequential order? i think it’s called the “Path”

    Reply
  3. Avatar of ValerieValerie says

    at

    I set up my Google Analytics and am trying to install them on my blog on one of your themes, but it messes up the theme, HELP.

    Reply
  4. Avatar of eshanneeshanne says

    at

    Thanx Daniel this is great, i’ve been using google-analytics for very long time, and yes these analytics are amazing hope it’ll be more open source for us someday!!!

    One more thing where can i download the plugins for these analytics?

    Reply
  5. Avatar of PrashantPrashant says

    at

    This is a great tool i have ever seen. This gives you all the information and even more than that you have ever expected. I will definitely Use this.Thank you for such a great article.

    Reply
  6. Avatar of Bang KritikusBang Kritikus says

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    Yes, i also use this analytics

    Reply
  7. Avatar of Tung's BlogTung's Blog says

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    Awesome ..

    Reply
  8. Avatar of IhateDesignIhateDesign says

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    thanks for the tips!!!

    Reply
  9. Avatar of doug mdoug m says

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    i’ve got a question for you. i have google analytics installed and verified using the html file upload method. when i search for contenet by title, only my main page comes up. should i be putting the tracking code in my singlepost or main index template? (i’m using wordpress)

    Reply
  10. Avatar of AlpayAlpay says

    at

    Reply
  11. Avatar of Debra MDebra M says

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    Google Analytics is probably the most complete and most well organized culmination of data about traffic, keywords, and customer demographics (without invading privacy). I like it.

    Reply
  12. Avatar of DashboardDashboard says

    at

    Google analytics is a great tool, the reports its generating
    are fast simple and delivers!!

    i personally use it for the simple tasks, but when i need real analytics i prefer using advances (and simple) Business intelligence software to connects to my data base and give me the freedom to ask anything on my mind and not just semi automatic reports.

    Reply
  13. Avatar of Suresh Chowhan - Web AnayticsSuresh Chowhan - Web Anaytics says

    at

    You did intelligently this job that can much help to bloggers event website owners also. In addition, if analyze top landing pages, bloggers can track which of the particular post or URL is landing through a keyword. You have discussed first point referral is really important tracking element need to know about the referral source.

    Reply
  14. Avatar of Melt du PlooyMelt du Plooy says

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    Stephen, my apologies. 🙂

    Reply
  15. Avatar of MiguelMiguel says

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    Cool! I didnt know how powerfull Google Analytics was. I let it to count my visits but I didnt realize such properties.

    Reply
  16. Avatar of Community Building BlogCommunity Building Blog says

    at

    Google Analytics never fails to impress me with the comprehensiveness of their statistics and their ease of use.

    I really can’t see how the majority of the paid for analytics businesses can compete.

    – Martin Reed

    Reply
  17. Avatar of DanielDaniel says

    at

    Bill, careful with those numbers from log files. They include hits from bots and stuff that is not necessarily “human”.

    I also liked to use my raw log files for analytics when I started with websites, but I realized they were giving me a fake picture of the situation.

    Reply
  18. Avatar of StephenStephen says

    at

    Madhur, Melt, check the byline. Daniel’s not the only one writing anymore. 😉

    That is a valid criticism, Bill. Of course, while log files are an excellent source of traffic data, they do little to reveal all of the information that Google Analytics does. I think the best solution would be a hybrid log-file/JavaScript tracking system. Who knows? Maybe Google will come out with software to keep an eye on the server side of things as well.

    Reply
  19. Avatar of Bill HartzerBill Hartzer says

    at

    This is a great review–very helpful with the screen captures, too. I totally forgot about the “content by title” area, as you can see the most popular posts. It might be interesting to link to those posts from the home page of your blog…which might help with links and traffic to the top posts.

    The only problem I have with Google Analytics or any other package that uses a javascript for tracking is that the data is not accurate. To get a true, accurate, look at your site’s stats you must use a web analytics package that analyzes your log files. I’m amazed that Google Analytics will report 1000 pageviews per day to a site while the site really has 5000 pageviews a day.

    Reply
  20. Avatar of Melt du PlooyMelt du Plooy says

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    You’ve really highlighted the most important aspects Daniel. I use a combination of both AWStats and Google Analytics to track my sites and those of my clients. I need the detailed information to correctly assess what needs to change, if at all.

    Reply
  21. Avatar of Madhur KapoorMadhur Kapoor says

    at

    Thanks a lot Daniel for this info . I already haven an account with Analytics but didnt use it that much because there were lot of things which i didnt find useful , but now i know what to see .

    Reply
  22. Avatar of ViktorViktor says

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    Exactly the things I look at, sometimes in exactly that order. Cool 🙂

    Reply
  23. Avatar of Wallet Rehab - Ways to save moneyWallet Rehab - Ways to save money says

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    The new google analytics is worlds better than the old one. IT was really difficult to understand. Thanks for highlighting the best parts of this greats stats package.

    Reply
  24. Avatar of listikallistikal says

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    As great as Google Analytics is, I think there’s just to much more me. I’ll stick to my “Mint” stats, nice, plain, simple.

    Reply
  25. Avatar of StephenStephen says

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    I don’t know, Daniel. I manage a lot of websites for work and I find it convenient to have all of my stats in the same place. Considering many of the websites I manage are often compared to one another, it’s also useful to have the same analytics package on all of them to provide accurate comparisons. Honestly, I’ve seen some disparate reports from different analytics software, even for the same website; it can really be like comparing apples to oranges, considering how different their tallying methodologies can be.

    Reply
  26. Avatar of DanielDaniel says

    at

    Google Analytics is good, but I guess it depends of the type of data you need for the website in questions. I use it on a couple of blogs where I need etailed data about referring traffic and user behavior.

    On sites that I don’t need such reporting I just tap AWstats or Webalizer.

    Reply
  27. Avatar of JoeyJoey says

    at

    I have been using google analytics and my first impression with the new format was not favorable. I liked the depth but for the daily notes I had too much to alter to get the data I wanted. The dashboard function helps. Thanks for pointing that out to me.

    Reply
  28. Avatar of GregGreg says

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    Thanks, I was wondering how to use those things.

    Reply
  29. Avatar of Daniel BatesDaniel Bates says

    at

    Ok, you convinced me, I’m going to go install this on my site now, I’ve been using Sitemeter and there just isn’t a lot of data to look at.

    Reply

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