Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics

In depth look at Google Analytics and how you can track visitors usage of a website.

The first half of this book is like a user manual for Google Analytics. It is a rehash of the help topics you find on the Google site. Some appear awfully close to having been lifted directly off the webpage.

However, the other half of the book is filled with some first rate, real world concepts which are followed by a detailed how-to-do-it walk through.

Great details provided on using regular expressions to create filters.

Yes you can get this all free online at Google and elsewhere but this inexpensive package makes the whole concept easy to wrap your mind around.

Highly recommended for anyone responsible for setting up practical web analytics for medium and small size sites.

Brian Clifton, who is deeply involved with web analytics at Google, usually succeeds in his endeavor to make Google Analytics accessible to an audience who is not just made up of webmasters. Chapter 9 called "Google Analytical Hacks" is probably by far the most challenging chapter for a non-technical audience. Mr. Clifton is very straightforward on this subject. He assumes that his readers have an in-depth knowledge of JavaScript.

Whoever reads this book will realize how much data Google Analytics can yield. Of course, data overkill can lead to analysis paralysis. For this reason, Mr. Clifton emphasizes that acting on the data is the single most important aspect of web analytics. Yet it is this that most people do not achieve. Furthermore, Bill Hunt, CEO of Global Strategies International, who Mr. Clifton quotes at the beginning of his book, observes: "Eight out of 10 implementations of web analytics solutions are incorrectly set up." Search engine and web site optimization requires time and resources dedicated to this endeavor.

In conclusion, Mr. Clifton shows with success how web analytics can be used to improve the key performance indicators for one's online success without minimizing the amount of work required to get it done.

Well written with lots of practical examples. Goes well beyond the basics and deals with what the data means. Well worth the cost for anyone who is serious about using Analytics Professionally. This is not a beginner book but it does go into lots of details that are hard to find from other sources. I go to this book before I search the Analytics help text.

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This book is an excellent resource for anyone using or looking to use Google Analytics. It's extremely detailed in its coverage of the many different ways you can use the system to collect and report important visitor statistics regarding your website. I'm definitely a stat geek and have used Google Analytics for a while. This book gave me loads of ideas on how I can better use the system to improve the tracking of visitor patterns, thereby helping me improve my site's efficiency and by extension, that of my business.

One word of warning, however. There is a considerable discussion of manipulating the Javascript which makes up the Google tracking code. It comes up on a very regular basis. These aren't madatory elements at all, just ways of extending the functionality in different ways. That means they can be bypassed in the case of most readers, but could make the text a bit intimidating for those without any programming know-how.

Now for my gripes. I found the arrangement of the materials somewhat sub-optimal. It's a situation where certain information on a subject is presented early on, then after much discussion of other subjects, a more detailed discussion is done later. Also, the reference source URLs listed in the book are too often ridiculously long - longer than a reader would be inclined to type in.

That stuff was minor, though, in light of the great value of the material.