Google Analytics Video Tutorial 2: Essential Stats

February 15, 2007 by in Analytics

This video is out of date. Take a look at the newer version: Google Analytics Tutorial: Basic Stats

Last time, I went over how to set up your Google Analytics account. This time, I’ll discuss the four essential statistics that, no matter what, you must keep an eye on in Google Analytics:

  1. Absolute Unique Visitors are the number of unique individuals who’ve come to your site in a given time period. So, if I come to your site 20 times in a week, I still only count as a single unique visitor. This statistic is important because it tells you your reach, or the total size of the audience coming to your site.
  2. Visits are the number of times folks open your site in their browser. If I come to your site 20 times in a week, I count as 20 visits. This is important, too – a high ratio of visits to visitors means you’ve got a loyal audience.
  3. Page Views tell you how many pages of your site are viewed in a given period. If I come to your site 20 times in a week, viewing 3 pages each time, I count as 60 page views. Page views are an indication of just how interested folks are in your site. A high ratio of page views to visits likely means an interested audience.
  4. Finally, Referring Source, found under Visitor Segment Performance, tells you where folks are coming from. And, you can use the Analysis button to drill further down, viewing keywords searched, etc…

As always, I’ve got video:

For the prettier, high-res version, you can watch it here: Full-size Video: Quicktime Version

I’m keeping these down to short, digestible segments. Next time I’ll talk about interpreting user navigation using the Content Optimization toolset.

Other lessons in this series:
Google Analytics Tutorial 1: Signing Up
Google Analytics Tutorial 3: Digging Deeper
Google Analytics Tutorial 4: Goals
Google Analytics Tutorial 5: Search Analytics

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Ian Lurie
/ @portentint
Portent's Founder & CEO

Ian Lurie is founder and CEO of Portent Inc., an internet marketing agency that has provided internet marketing, including PPC, SEO, social and analytics services, since 1995. more >

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Comments

19 Responses to “Google Analytics Video Tutorial 2: Essential Stats”

  1. rachel - February 18, 2007 at 1:12 pm #

    Your Google Analytics tutorials are great! Please keep them coming, and
    THANKS!!!
    Rachel

  2. Isha Gupta - February 27, 2007 at 12:44 am #

    Your sessions are helpful. A video makes it quite easier to understand
    Isha

  3. Ponn Sabra - April 4, 2007 at 12:12 pm #

    This is my first G.A. tutorial, and its great! I look forward to learning how to better understand my blog stats in the upcoming tutorials.
    Thanks so much!

  4. Todd Jamieson - April 12, 2007 at 2:52 pm #

    Great site. I am in the business too – and I really like the clarity you bring to such a complex subject.

  5. Stan - April 17, 2007 at 10:22 am #

    Thanks! Good job you did.

  6. Hannah - April 18, 2007 at 2:21 pm #

    Another cool tool from Google. Thanks for the tutorial!

  7. Nikki Laffel - July 27, 2007 at 7:59 am #

    Ian, thanks for the help! Is it possible to rename the “sources” so they have titles like “home page” or “profile”, etc, rather than the URL? sometimes it is hard to quickly see what page the URL refers to because of the numbers/letters/etc…let me know.
    Thanks!
    Nikki

  8. ian - July 27, 2007 at 10:17 pm #

    Yes, with filters. I’ll be doing a piece on that soon…

  9. Ryan - October 22, 2007 at 9:47 am #

    Love your videos. Can’t seem to get the download feature to work. Any suggestions?

  10. ian - October 22, 2007 at 3:28 pm #

    Hi Ryan,
    Try right-clicking the link and then click ‘download’ or ‘save file’ or ‘download linked file’, or whatever similar text shows up in the menu.
    Ian

  11. Ben - June 3, 2008 at 6:14 pm #

    Hi,
    Thanks for making these. They’re very helpful.

  12. john - July 15, 2008 at 11:34 am #

    Hi Ian !
    Thanks for your vid. Very helpful for anyone new to GA.
    But i am just wondering if it is possible to count how many pdf,ppt or other files have been downloaded from the site.
    Thanks !
    john

  13. Ian - July 15, 2008 at 1:08 pm #

    @John you’ll want to use Google Analytics’ outgoing link tracking or event tracking, even though these aren’t outgoing links. Go into the documentation and search for ‘outgoing links’ and you’ll see what you need.

  14. Web Design Glasgow - November 27, 2008 at 7:31 am #

    Hi Ian,
    I’ve been looking for a good analytics tutorial for a while and can’t believe some of the nonsense out there, but these video tutorials are the business – many thanks for taking the time to make them, everyone involved in marketing or web/seo services ought to watch them,
    Cheers
    James

  15. Nirav - April 28, 2009 at 9:41 pm #

    Can you please provide me any PDF tutorial for the Web analytics as i am new to it and want to learn from scratch?
    BTW the videos by you are very useful and simple to understand.
    Thanks!!!
    Nirav

  16. Star - September 29, 2009 at 10:55 am #

    Your tutorials are very helpful, concise and down to the point. Thanks for taking time to do the videos.

  17. Leafs - November 21, 2009 at 1:50 pm #

    great videos
    curious question.
    how come there are advertisements at the beginning of each video? whats the reasoning behind this?

  18. Ian - November 22, 2009 at 8:01 am #

    @Leafs Not sure what you mean – I’m not seeing any commercial…

  19. Sally - May 24, 2010 at 1:17 am #

    Ian, I am finding your videos invaluable for my business, I am discovered just how powerful Google Analytics is, I am so glad I use it now, Sally :)