Google Analytics
Every several months or so, I find myself raving about the newest Google product. But for most of them, I stop using them because they are not that useful for me.
I’ve tried and uninstalled Google Desktop Search (it was blocking out a lot of space on my harddrive that refused to be defragmented and slowing everything down; uninstalling freed up something like 4-6GBs of space for me), Google Earth (it’s nice to look at once in a while, but I found myself hardly every firing it up), and Google Desktop (I kept overloading the number of widgets and them getting annoyed by the clutter, then stripping back, then adding some more, rinse, and repeat). I’ve tried Google Spreadsheets, but I’m not that excited about it because I only use spreadsheets once a year (for NaNoWriMo).
Google Analytics is something else though. It took maybe a minute to sign up (once they send you an invitation) and set up my various domains. Then it took maybe another minute to add the tracking info to my blogger templates so that each page of each website could be tracked.
It’s great! I love the little charts and graphs it produces. I, like many others, initally thought that you needed to run AdWords in order to take advantage of Google Analytics, but no.
Frankly, it’s not too different from Site Meter, which I know several of you use already, but it has a bunch of different types of reports and just looks a lot nicer. It can be used on any website or webpage (even if you just want to track a single page, for some reason). I recommend it.
But now I know there is a person from Mexico who looked at my site! And that someone we know just newly linked to the foodblog.
And that someone uses a Camino browser (but the other Mac users use the Safari browser).
Uh… yeah. And one of you lucky bastards has a 1920×1200 screen, while there is still a poor fool on 1024×768. Sorry, whoever you are.
I just like charts. If that’s so wrong, I don’t wanna be… repeating cliches. 😀
1024×768 is me. 🙁
Hmm, it just looks like a Google branded urchin (which they bought). Only difference is that they’re offering for free instead of having to buy it or have it offered by your ISP.
Is there a secret to getting an invitation? I signed up a month ago or so and am still waiting. Maybe they just don’t like me. I look forward to pretty charts someday…
edy: Yeah, it’s just urchin. But it’s new to me. 😀
perlick: I didn’t think there was a secret. I just signed up and my invite was waiting in my gmailbox the next morning. I don’t see any facility to add more people, otherwise I’d invite you. Actually, I might be able to procure an invite for you by sharing access to one of my domains. If you have a gmail account, leave me a note or send me email at the alum email (eingy) and I’ll try to invite you.
Okay, you just went from total geek, to uber-geek in my book. Congratulations!