One of the most important pieces of information is knowing where your visitors come from and what actions they take when they reach your website; this helps you pinpoint the sources of traffic that have the highest conversion rates for positive actions.

A positive action or conversion can be as simple as:

• Shopping Cart Transaction
• ‘Contact Us’ Form
• Visit To a Specific “Jump” Page
• White Paper Request
• Seminar or Webinar Registration
• Download Or Trial
• Support Request
• Quote Request

3rd Party Tracking Analytics 

There are other good web analytics programs available (such as Google Analytics)but many people are concerned with having Google Analytics or other analytics programs knowing all the details about your site traffic. Hitslink is an alternative solution that can provide comparable reports to Google Analytics at a very low monthly fee without disclosing your traffic information.

In my 11 years of experience I have never personally experienced a problem with Google Analytics. However, there are other individuals in the industry that question the logic of allowing the people you buy advertising space from see all the details of your traffic sources.

In 2007 Tony Wright wrote an article called Can Google be Evil After reading the article yourself, perhaps you can decide whether or not you are comfortable with disclosing your traffic sources to Google or other paid online advertisers.

The ability to use a 3rd party tracking web analytics program provides a level of comfort knowing you can keep your visitor information confidential. You do not have to worry about disclosing the information to the same people you buy ads from.

HitsLink Updates and Release Highlights

HitsLink is very effective web analytics services that enable you to get the information you need to make informed decisions on how the work you marketing campaigns effectively. The latest version of HitsLink includes numerous commonly requested enhancements plus addition significant new features added to help get the most out of your website and keyword marketing campaigns.

Release highlights include:

New Search Engine Reports:

• Pages by Search Engine
• Pages by Search Engine and Search Terms
• Search Terms by Search Engine
• Search Engine Trend Report (Total Search Engine Referrals)

Enhanced Navigation:

• Report detail
• Context Menus for added details
• Improved Date Calendar
• Column Filtering
• Add, combine and bookmark reports for customer snapshots
• Email & Export support for Word (Mac & Windows), Excel, HTML, PDF, CSV, RTF and Word Perfect
• Printer Friendly Reports

Other Reports:

• Average Page Views by Visitor
• Average Time by Visitor
• Average Time Spent on Site
• Average Time Spent on Pages
• Up to 1000 latest visitors detail

Web Analytics Comparison

HitsLink Professional

• Comprehensive traffic statistics in real-time
• Email alerts for user-definable traffic levels
• Visitor navigation paths
• Tracks search terms from 300 search engines
• Hundreds of additional statistics on your visitors

HitsLink Enterprise

All the features of HitsLink Professional, plus…

• Provides identification of fraudulent clicks, including the ability
• to set up notifications based on your defined criteria.
• Website statistics for user definable events, for example, trials, downloads, etc.
• See how your email or pay-per-click campaigns convert to customers

HitsLink Platinum

All the features of HitsLink Enterprise, plus…

• Realtime dynamic segmentation
• Multivariate (A/B) testing
• Funnel analysis reporting
• Multi-source tracking

E-Business (also known as electronic business) has become a sales outlet for many businesses over the Internet. The phenomenal growth of E-business since the late nineties is an indication of how easy and convenient Internet shopping has become. Manufacturing, retail as well as service providing businesses are making increasing use of the Internet not only to advertise and market their business but also provide sales services as well.

The enormous increase in e-Business does not always spell success for the business. In order to be successful, a company must possess a wealth of knowledge in Internet Marketing and Advertising, Search Engine Optimization and Social Media. If you run your own e-Business or manage the online aspect of your company there is no need to be overwhelmed at the thought of doing it all on your own.

There is a host of software material designed to help improve your Return on Investment (ROI) throughout the marketing, SEO and social media aspects of your online presence. As we all know, ROI is vital if you want to stay ahead of your competition and secure a successful business in the long run.

As with any traditional advertising campaign, once an online advertising campaign (such as Pay Per Click) is launched it is imperative that the marketer keep an eye on the sales performance generated as a result of the ad. Because of the competitive nature of e-Business today, keeping a track record of visitors and customers to your website can help the marketer make well informed decisions that will be targeted at increasing the business’ sales and profits.

So How Effective Is It to Pay Per Click?

Every marketer is faced with the challenge of creating an ad that maximizes the use of appropriate keywords and terms that will generate the highest traffic levels and conversion rates. But how do you know when you have maximized the effectiveness of your PPC campaign?

Pay Per Click (PPC) conversion tracking is a software tool that can help any marketer determine how effective PPC really is. The software keeps track of every visitor (a “potential customer”) that enters the website. The tracking systems also provides a number of other statistics related to the series of events (or clicks) made by the visitor or potential customer.

One of the main objectives of the PPC conversion tracking system is to get the relevant information of where the clicks have originated. This enables marketers to target the ideal market for each of their advertising campaigns. When the paid advertisement is aimed at the global market this data becomes very valuable.

Perhaps the most valuable data generated from PPC tracking software is the ability to pinpoint the traffic sources that generate the most conversions, which may not necessarily be the same source that generates the most visitors. After all, visitors do not always earn money but conversions generate sales and profits.

A conversion that is executed on affiliate sites is tracked and the data recorded is another benefit of the PPC conversion tracking system. The tracking system records every conversion by date and time and the marketer can readily use this information to determine how effective it is to Pay Per Click as well as determine their future PPC strategies.

PPC and Conversion Tracking – The Salesman’s Right Hand

Sales tracking software has become a very handy and necessary tool in today’s business world.

Professional salesmen use this software to replace all the paper spreadsheets containing relevant data. Sales tracking software enables the salesperson to keep track of sales as well as new leads that may also lead to future sales opportunities.

Customer accounts and management can usually take up a lot of time. Sales tracking software gives the salesperson direct access to customer details, significantly reducing workload. This helps eliminate unnecessary waste of time and faster sales execution.

As with purchasing any software, care should be taken that the sales tracking software is ideally suited for your business operations.

The fundamental way it works is that users click on an advertisement (can be text or a banner or a graphic) if it attracts their attention or sparks their interest. The user is then directed to the advertiser’s website where they can further explore the advertised product, service or information. The great thing about this form of advertising is that the advertiser only has to pay for each time the users actually click on their particular ad and not the number of times the advertisement is viewed.

The way this works in Search Engines is that the advertiser will bid on their desired keyword phrases and when a user types in that keyword or views a web page containing that keyword, the advertisement will be displayed. This helps to generate highly qualified traffic as the user is already searching for a term or phrase related to the topic.

Google AdWords and Bing AdCenter are among the largest pay per click optimization providers and serve most clients across the globe; Yahoo Search marketing and MSN Ad centre were also popular at one point. In addition to these large powerhouse Search Engines, companies such as Ask Jeeves, Kanoodle and MIVA are also proven to be market leaders in the world of Pay Per Click optimization.

How To Run Pay Per Click Successfully

Having pay per click optimization does not in itself prove success; it needs to be run properly in order to generate returns. You need to know if the people who are clicking on your advertisement are actually converting into real customers; if they aren’t then you are paying for useless traffic.

Running a successful pay per click campaign involves writing good ad copy and bidding strategically on your keywords. Good ad copy and entering the right bid price together with a website that converts visitors into paying clients will soon result in triumph and profits. Remember that if you don’t run your PPC campaign efficiently and effectively, the expense incurred could be heavy and your results achieved would more disadvantageous than beneficial.

Hitslink Helps Build Successful Pay Per Click Optimization

HitsLink is a web analytics aid that provides a report on the amount of visits a particular website receives. Details about how visitors found the site, how effective a site is and whether or not visitors transacted on the site are all included in HitLink’s reporting system.

HitsLink can be useful in terms of a pay per click application in the sense that the report allows the user to get information regarding the clicks and transactions. This detailed report will list all transactions and activities that have occurred on the website as well as the click history of all visitors including which search engines, keywords and referrers have generated clicks.

HitLinks can correlate the cost per click (CPC) for your PPC campaign and the resulting conversion value; thus you can compute your cost-per-conversion and your ROI. Reports containing details such as these are extremely useful to make profit-oriented decisions and to objectively determine if your advertising is feasible or if the costs are higher than the returns received.

HitsLink Useful For Pay Per Click Fraud

Click Fraud is a type of Internet crime that occurs when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser by clicking on an advertisement with no interest in the link but rather to generate a charge per click. Some PPC advertisers fear that their competition may do this to drive up marketing costs or that the advertising company may do this to increase their advertising sales.

Users who are generally concerned with Pay Per Click fraud can incorporate HitsLink to help monitor and prevent fraud. The tracking capabilities of HitsLink allows users to track repeat visitors from PPC Campaigns. An advanced email feature can also be enabled send alerts when traffic spikes or click fraud is detected. Once the tracker is installed, a report can be produced within seconds.

Due to the accuracy and efficient response times as well as seemingly infinite storage capabilities, computers have enabled businesses to run more efficiently, be more accurate, and ultimately become more profitable. The introduction of the internet and web surfing has given way to a new form of business: e-Business.

The advent of e-Business creates a whole new form of business marketing and advertising strategies; these new means of promoting a business in the online world requires a new form of analytics and measurement systems.

Web Analytics

Web analytics provides companies with accurate and efficient analytic and measurement systems. Useful web analytic tools can assist with  many critical areas of business such as:

• Marketing Strategy
• New Product Design
• Applying and Creating New Business Processors
• Strategic Business Planning

Needless to say, web analytical research has become the core centre of business strategy. When designing core strategies, companies can benefit from web analytics which help to:

• Position companies closer to their target market
• Provide analytical forecasts to make necessary amendments to accommodate shifts in marketing trends
• Give a competitive edge
• Place you at the forefront of new business initiatives

Web Analytics Helps You Become Customer Driven

By having access to vast research material and data from a variety of categories will position your company to:

• Identify your target market
• Identify the needs in that target market
• Create products and services to meet those needs

It is therefore a vital and useful marketing and research tool that empowers companies to be driven by the needs of the customer base, always delivering the right product at the right time, in the right place.

Understanding E-Business Within Your Business Model

The Internet has now become a tool for businesses to provide services to customers.

Everyday, products and services are bought and sold electronically; companies and clients communicate via email, instant messenger and webinar services. E-Business initiatives that drive these activities require the same principles for management as are used in the offline world. With strategic planning, execution and analysis, businesses will be able to achieve their online business goals.

Because it is estimated that nearly 50% of all e-Business initiatives will fail, using web analytics in e-Business is crucial. In order to succeed, companies must carefully measure and monitor ROI ( Return On Investment ) based on results driven by KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators). These KPI’s are designed to measure whether or not e-Commerce objectives are being met and serve as warning signs to inform when things are going wrong or may be headed off track.

Today, many companies realize the importance of a closed loop analysis of their e-Business and e-Commerce divisions by using web analytics. This helps to keep track of exactly how their online strategies are performing.

Realize the Benefits of Web Analytics

Web analytics positions companies to run more profitably by enabling better strategic operations.  Overall this can help reduce the cost of sales, increase brand awareness and assist in improving customer satisfaction ratings.

Researching the best strategies to maximize the use of web initiatives will help you identify your target market and measure the results achieved.

Web Analytics provides regular access to the information required to make important decisions and the information required to fine tune your execution skills. Alterations or changes can be made as to how your web analytics data is stored and how your company’s decision makers can use it to strategically gain advantage, ultimately allowing executives to maximize benefits and minimize losses.

Let’s admit it. We are not all IT geeks or webmasters or even marketing analysts. We may not know all the measurement and tracking tools and features technology is capable of today.

Because of this, some businesses struggle to find suitable web analytics aid. In particular, small businesses on a shoestring budget who may not have the resources to purchase a complicated advanced analytics tool and may not know what type of analytics product is sufficient for their needs.

Choosing the right web analytics product is vital and being informed is the first step to finding the right fit.

Starting With The Facts – What are Web Analytics?

Web Analytics can be seen as a study of online behavior with the intention of improving upon and encouraging a desired behavior or outcome from a desired target market.

There are two types of web analytics: on-site and off-site. On-site web analytics measure the performance of your own website while off-site web analytics measures a website’s potential audience on the internet as a whole.

Advantages of Incorporating Web Analytics

Web analytics products are mainly used to improve and manage a website. When applied to a website it generates a report on all activity and transactions of visitors that occur within the particular website.

The purpose of tracking visitors’ behavior is important to observe whether marketing is effective or not. The visitor tracker therefore is not only used to determine the amount of visitors a site has but also understanding why visitors are attracted to the site and also how.

This visitor tracker function of the most advantageous tools of web analytics. This tool helps in understanding the visitors’ decision making process and eventually functions to help make the website more user-friendly. The information received by the tracker can be used to identify where visitors enter the site (landing page) and at which pages they drop off (exit page). By focusing on making the landing pages more inviting and improving the exit pages to entice visitors to stay, a webmaster can make the website much more useful and targeted towards visitors’ expectations.

More specifically, this study of behavior done by  the visitor tracker can help a company to improve marketing in various ways. They are able to tell what keywords brought the visitor to their site, the navigation paths the visitor followed, what web pages are interesting and those that are not, and finally how marketers can improve and adapt their marketing strategy to address any negative behaviors.

The focus is on analyzing visitor behavior and not merely looking at statistics and numbers. By doing this, the company not only stands to benefit but the visitor or customer also stands to benefit from a more useful website.

Why Choose HitslinkWeb Analytics

HitsLink is proven to be the most reliable and cheapest web analytics provider AND it is just as efficient as its competitors, Webtrends and Google.

Hitslink is an easy to use free service with great features. For companies testing web analytics waters for the first time HitsLink could be the safest option to consider since it is absolutely free. This means that you can play around with the product, figure out how it works and become comfortable with its features before you commit to an expensive, more advanced analytics tool.

The fact that Hitslink is free is not to say that it is not top of the range. In fact with Hitslink analytics you will be able to compare behaviors and profitability of visitors from ads, keywords, Search Engines and emails, thus gaining insight into how to improve your site overall.

The History of Google Analytics

The original developer of what we know as Google Analytics today was the Urchin Software Cooperation who originally named their program ‘Urchin on Demand’. Google saw the value of the company and bought Urchin Software in 2005, renaming the program ‘Google Analytics’.

Google is still sells the software ‘Urchin on Demand’ and released the sixth edition in April 2008. Urchin on Demand is different than Analytics because it is sold through agents who also offer value added services. Google Analytics, on the other hand, is available for free to all users, even if they do not advertise through Google.

There are, however, some generous limitations that apply to all users of Google Analytics that do not also advertise through Google. Once these limits have been reached there are nominal service fees charged for the use of the tracking software.

How Does Google Analytics Work?

Users are simply required to add Google Analytics Tracking Code, also referred to as a ‘page tag’ to every page of their website. This tracking code loads a file from the Google server and creates a link between the website and the user’s account number.

The tracking code also installs cookies used to store anonymous information about visitor recurrence, time stamps and referrers on visitors’ computers. Google Analytics processed this data on an hourly basis and is only processed a few hours behind real time.

Some people are concerned with giving confidential information such as sales figures, conversion rates or advertisements costs to Google. However, you will ultimately need to feed this type of information to some software tracking company in order to receive detail reports.

What Can Google Analytics Do for You?

Visitors can arrive at a website via a link on e-mail, search engines, pay per click advertising or digital documents; Google analytics keeps track of all of these sources and delivers detailed reports on this information to the client.

Pay per click campaigns on Google can be intensively monitored and conversions to sales easily determined. Sales conversions are monitored by gathering information from the funnel pages on a website, these are the pages leading directly to a sale.
This can give you vital information about abandoned sales, indicating possible problems in the purchasing process. This program is very flexible and can run reports weekly, monthly or any other periods that you may select.

How Can I Benefit from Google Analytics?

Save Time and Money

Most companies do not have the professional resources to perform website analysis in-house. If they did, it would become extremely time consuming and would require a large amount of disk space.

Save on Advertising Expenses

Google Analytics can help you determine which PPC advertisements are not generating many sales and which advertisements are performing very well. By canceling the ads not delivering the desired return on investment and allocating those funds towards effective campaigns, you will save a considerable amount of money and maximize your advertising budget.

Maximize Return on Investment

Ads that lead traffic to your website and contribute to high conversion rates can further be optimized to capitalize no high ranking ads. Google Analytics reports can easily be used in return of investment calculations and used in budgeting and other marketing decisions.

One highly effective way of doing this is to incorporate web analytics feedback into your website. By placing analytic feedback on your website you can study your visitor or customer behavior in order to shape it into highly profitable behavior.

Unfortunately, few people actually understand the value of using a web analytics service to optimize visitor behavior. Consider this: web analytics feedback helps you become aware of any activity (both positive and negative) that occurs on your website.

The systems that report these activities are very user friendly; reports carry only the necessary information on where your website is or is not performing well. One is also able to pick up on whether other companies’ websites (such as competitor sites) are useful or not. Thus, by determining this, you can increase your profits simply by using the feedback from web analytics and applying it to make educated decisions.

Web Analytics – A Useful Decision Making Tool

As mentioned above, web analytics are handy in decision-making.

How they do this is by tracking visitors on your websites and recording all their actions. What you will be able to see is which links they click, what pages they visit and in what order, how long they spend on each page as well as where they drop off of your site.

A hit link is a type of web analytics aid used in a similar way to detect who visits your site and how they found you. It will show if they buy or transact on your site and also how effective your advertising is. The information received can now be used to decide what ads to keep, what links to improve on or whether people are interested in the site at all.

Understanding Performance Leads to Increased Profits

How can you take the information you know about your website’s performance and apply it in a way to increase website profits? How exactly will knowing the performance of a website increase profits?

Is the website not only but an additional source of advertising? True, a company’s website could be seen as another way of promoting their business but what needs to be remembered is that some companies rely solely on the internet to not only market their business but sometimes it is their business.

All correspondence is done via the Internet and all sales transactions take place online. Making use of web analytics feedback in these circumstances is vitally important. To be able to work out the trends on the site and know the activity thereon ultimately helps in decision making but also increases profits.

By incorporating HitsLink, one is able to monitor the amount of people entering their site daily. With this, they will be able to see where they can improve their products more and also try to figure out why there is low activity. They will be able to tell at which point a potential customer drops off and then make the website more captivating to prevent this in the future.

Statistic Geek Not Necessary

With various hit link services readily available on the internet web analytic aids are beneficial in the sense that instead of hiring a stats professional or your IT guy to monitor web activity, business are empowered to measure on their own how engaged users are; this is yet another way of saving money and indirectly increasing profits.

Google Analytics is a tool which can monitor virtually all the activity that occurs on your website. More importantly it is a tool used to monitor important details about how traffic enters and exits your web pages. By inserting some Analytics Tools onto the pages you want to monitor you can enhance and optimize Google Analytics.

What areas can I optimize?

Entrance Sources

Entrance sources are found in the Contents Tab of Google Analytics. Before you install and use this tool you should check where your traffic is coming from. Is it coming from other referral sites, social networks, paid traffic or Search Engines? If the majority of your traffic is not coming from Search Engines it probably means that your pages are not optimized enough to attract and receive the levels of traffic you want and need. If this is the case, you will need to optimize Google Analytics by activating this tool.

Entrance Keywords

Entrance keywords are also found in the Contents Tab of Google Analytics. This tool shows you what keywords your visitors queried in Search Engines to ultimately reach your website. You  need to investigate which keywords people use to find your site and decide if these are the words that you are truly targeting. If they are not, then chances are that your website is not fully optimized in the Search Engines for the keywords you want to be found for.

Site Overlay

Finally, the Site Overlay tool is very useful in optimizing Google Analytics. With the tool you can overlay your statistics on your website so that you can view which links on your pages are clicked the most. In addition to tracking clicks, you can also evaluate the transactions, revenue and website goals.

What are the Benefits of Web Analytics?

One highly valued Web Analytics Benefit is the ability to measure and maximize ROI.

Another Web Analytics Benefit is being able to better target your marketing efforts by’grouping’ visitors. Determine which group your visitor belongs in and whether or not they are among the group that is most likely to buy, become a member or a subscriber. Web analytics tools defines these groups by sorting visitors based on the content they read, the actions they take or even from which URL they come from.

Among other Web Analytics Benefits, one that stands out and deserves mentioning is the ability to help customers help themselves. Analytic feedback can indicate whether or not visitors are finding the information they need or want on your website. By pinpointing areas where your website fails visitors you can make improvements to better service your visitors.

Early detection systems that highlight possible problems on your website is considered another important benefit. Incorporating a real-time analysis of visitor interaction and communication with your website can prompt you to make immediate changes that hep ensure your product meets the needs of your next customer. This can potentially uncover larger support issues that could become liabilities.

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PPC Bidding Example:

The word ‘Nike’ is a far more competitive word than the word ‘shoes’.  The person who bids for the word ‘Nike’ will pay a higher price to have it listed on, lets say, Google AdWords, than the person who is trying to get a place for their keyword ‘shoes’.

And as with any bidding those who are willing to pay the most get the prize, which in this case is the top ad position for your website.

How to Get Started with PPC Management – Decide on your Cost Per Click

Each time a visitor clicks on your website you pay the same amount that you bid for your keyword, this is called ‘pay per click’ or PPC.  To get your PPC Bid Management started you need to identify the maximum cost per click, or CPC, you are willing to spend for a keyword phrase.

CPC’s change over time and from search engine to search engine.

This is because the CPC is often dependent on a set ‘rule of thumb’ within a particular industry or on factors like profit margins. If you are not comfortable using the CPC based on the ‘rule of thumb’ already in place you can hire a PPC manager before engaging PPC Bid Campaigns. If you want to try creating a campaign yourself you could try using a simple calculation where you average out the top five current bids. You could base your CPC on the profit margin for the product or service you are advertising.

Profit Margin CPC Example:

If your product sells for $100 each and your profit margin is 20%, then you are left with $20 profit each time you make a sale.  If you expect 1 sale from 100 click-throughs on your PPC ads, you will make $20 profit which needs to spread over the 100 visitors you must pay for. This equates to 20 cents per click (CPC= .20)

I Decided On My CPC – Now What?

Now you can start bidding. This is where it becomes extremely important for you to develop a strategy for managing the bidding process. It is important to focus on promoting your website in the most effective way. One way to be successful at this is to build many PPC Campaigns and lists across multiple engines. However, these lists also need to be monitored and studied in terms of assessing performance.

Ultimately, you need to analyze what value you are receiving in relation to what you are spending.

Analyzing PPC Value Example:

PPC Campaign 1 (CPC = .20) gets 500 clicks and makes 4 sales. The cost of the campaign is $100 (.20×500) and the profit is $80 (4×20). After PPC costs, this campaign’s profit is -$20.

PPC Campaign 2 (CPC = .30) gets 200 clicks and makes 4 sales. The cost of the campaign is $60 (.3×200) and the profit is $80 (4×20). After PPC costs, this campaign’s profit is $20 (80-60).

Although Campaign 1 appears to get more clicks and has a lower CPC, it makes negative profits while Campaign 2 makes a positive profit.

If you run multiple campaigns across multiple search engines this analysis can become very time consuming and can get very complex very fast. This is why many website owners opt for using PPC Management services. If this is you, you may consider investigating hiring a good PPC Bid Manager to help you get the best results you possibly can. After all, the best results mean the most profit, keeping you ahead of the competition.

One avenue to explore is using a web based subscription for PPC Management or purchasing software specifically developed for tracking PPC bids and profits. These types of programs contain more functions than a normal online marketing tool.

More About PPC Management Secrets

Most often pay per click secrets are based on experiences of people who can offer better ways to do things, but usually pay per click secrets offer the reader a way to get advertising at a lower cost.

What does Google Analytics Options offer?

If all you are looking for is a monitoring tool that will tell you how many people are using or visiting your website and how they got there, then Google Analytics Options is ideal. It can be used by anyone with a website – bloggers and webmasters find it invaluable in monitoring traffic levels and gaining information such as:

• Loyalty of visitors
• Length of visit
• How many times visitors return

Google Analytics Options can also show you:

• What visitors are searching for
• What traffic source visitors come from
• What visitors are reading on your website
• What parts or pages of your website they visit
• Average time spent on each page

Another key component tracked by Google Analytics is traffic source – or where your visitors are coming from. A traffic source can be ‘direct’ which is when the visitor comes to your website by typing your URL into their browser or having you bookmarked in their browser. A direct visitor does not use a Search Engine or a link from another website. Another traffic source is called ‘referring’ which means that visitors came to your website by clicking on a link on another website. Search Engines qualify as a traffic source of their own. Google Analytics Options will show how many people come to your site via Search Engines and give a more specific breakdown of traffic from each Search Engine (ie. Google, Bing, Yahoo, MSN etc).

How does Google Analytics Options Work?

You must first install the application and add ‘tags’ to the HTML code of each of your web pages.

After this initial setup, Google Analytics Options is simple. Each time you log in to your Google Analytics Options account you will be presented with your “Dashboard”. It is very simply a graph which shows the evolution of traffic on your site over a certain period of time which can be set for long periods, or a specific day.

There is also an option that shows page views, unique views and bounce rate.  A bounce rate shows when a visitor leaves a page or site without visiting any other site within a specified time span, so this will able to tell if the visitor found what they are looking for on your site, or whether they are still searching.

With this type of valuable information, you can optimize your site, or blog to attract more visitors.

Does Google Share your Data?

Google holds itself in very high regard in terms of user trust and user experience. As such, Google offers its customers the option to either ‘opt in’ and share their data or to ‘opt out’ and remain anonymous in the data sharing option.

Your first instinct may be to opt out but choosing to share your data with Google helps to improve their services. You can benefit from more powerful services in the future by giving Google your information today; the features that Google improves are often only available to those who choose to ‘opt in’ to sharing data.

If you do choose the anonymous option Google removes all identifiable information about your website. The data is then combined with data from hundreds of other anonymous websites in similar industries. The reports are generated in aggregate form.

Google Analytics Options feels that this data sharing policy enables them to improve in two ways. First, as their goal is to provide customers with transparency, choice and improved product experience, it generally helps to improve a better customer experience. Second, the data sharing does not affect customers’ individual accounts without having to take an additional step of explicit approval for each affected product or service.