Google Analytics Crash Course Notes

Thinking that you will adequately learn Google Analytics by clicking around the product, even over years, is a foolish concept. You will only understand a subset of its features and how they work together. You need to do your homework.

I cannot improve upon Google Analytics’ (GA) own crash course, titled Google Analytics IQ Lessons. It covers just about all the material in the paid Analytics courses (101, 201, and 301) at just the right level–not too high, and not too deep.

Here are my notes of the key gotcha’s and items to configure for your GA Web Properties. As well, I’ve linked to other helpful learning resources. As is my standard practice, this is mostly for my reference down-the-road, so it’s not comprehensive. However, I figure others can benefit from them as well.

Gotcha’s

Incognito mode and other browser privacy sessions count as new Visitors, Visits, and Page Views, as if the user had cleared his cookies. Not a huge surprise to most, I’m sure. (Although other trackers can still track you.)
Visits are separated by exits from the site or a 30-minute cookie timeout while on the site. Advertising Campaign attribution expires after a 6-month cookie timeout. Both are customizable.
Time on Exit Pages is not tracked because time is calculated between page loads on the same site. This also means that Bounce Page time is not tracked either. This has serious implications for some genres of sites, like blogs where a bit of traffic goes into and out of a single article. Know how to track Exit Page times and Bounce Pages, if you need to.
A Visitor can only trigger a Goal conversion once during a Visit, but can trigger an E-commerce Goal multiple times in a Visit.
Filters are applied between raw data capture and the Account’s Profile where the data is ultimately stored. Even if you change a Filter that sits in-between the raw feed and Profile, you cannot recover historical data. Try accomplishing the same filtering with Advanced Segments instead, which don’t run the risk of losing data. At the least, you should use Advanced Segments or other features to test concepts before creating a real Filter for them.
Domains and subdomains can break tracking in many glorious ways–especially E-commerce Goal tracking.

Basic Checklist

Always have a raw Profile that has no Filters, Advanced Segments, etc.
Have a Profile that excludes internal IP address so you’re not tracking yourself and your staff as they click around your site.
Have a Profile that exclusively tracks internal IP addresses for debugging Google Analytics code on your site.
Use the Google Analytics Debugger Chrome Extension for your own debugging and analysis of competitors’ tracking.
Enable Auto-Tagging between Google AdWords and Analytics if you are using both products.
If you create an AdWords Profile, set up two Filters to focus-in on AdWords traffic (Campaign Source: google, Campaign Medium: cpc).
Set up E-commerce tracking.
Set up Goal tracking.
Set up Internal Site Search tracking. (It’s much easier than you think.)
Utilize _addIgnoredOrganic to attribute Organic Search Visits for your web site’s address (i.e. someone searching for “example.com”) to a Direct Visit instead.
Set up appropriate Custom Variables to track additional information about Visitors, Visits, and Page Views.