@rich-brooks We have a Google Analytics account at my association; however I have only started looking at it. I’m trying to figure out the number of downloads of a presentation that we did last week. I know through our CMS stats that we had over 1500 visits (which is a lot for us). I need to delve into FB’s analytics and find a service for Twitter monitoring. Since we’re not as focused on converting leads into sales, our tracking is more about basic stats such as likes, hits and RT’s. I’ll be interested in seeing what others say about GA and other tools.

@rich-brooks We’ve been using GA for a while now, and have most of our clients set-up on it too.

My favorite stats to review are the keywords to see how people found us in the search engines and referring URLs to learn about other external links that I may not be aware of, or to determine which external links are referring the most click-throughs.

I also like to take a look at what pages site visitors are leaving our site on and try to figure out what I can do differently on those pages or to try to retain them longer on the site.

Our Internet Marketing Guru wrote a simpe blog post about web analytics:

http://keystoneclick.com/blogs/ryan-mehaffey/web-analytics-101-part-1

I’ve been on StatCounter.com since 2006, but only use their monthly tracking of total visitors.  My GA doesn’t go that far back.  

I have GA tied to Google Adwords.  One of the things I track is the effectiveness of the Google Adwords.  I’ve done a lot of changing and now while I have fewer hits (which cost more), they are a higher quality of hits.  I also like to check the InPage Analytics to see which of my links are getting the most hits.  I wish they could track the links behind the images.  I like the new Beta realtime….Found that we are page one no 3 for search on JDLink which tells me I need to pump up that landing page.  

We have a mobile website so I like to check on the status of those pages and types of smartphones.

I’ve been using Google Analytics for about 6 months and has been very useful but I didn’t know that you can get information on what keywords and url’s they enter. Thanks @lorihighby

@annfurnivall: I don’t think that’s depressing, just interesting! You do well on “long-tail searches”, which often represent people who are ready to make a buying decision.

@jackburgin: Unfortunately, Google has made a recent change where they’re hiding the keywords that searchers are using if they’re logged into Google. Thus, about 22% of our traffic from keywords is “not set.”

Odd, coming from a company that’s currently under investigation for illegally tracking users who are using the Safari browser.

OH!pinion (not a popular one either *sigh) —

I use Google Analytics very sparingly. Always have. Putting all a clients eggs in one big basket is too narrow a view to do any serious SEO work.  There are too many (in many ways better) alternatives out there to depend on a company that has such a huge stake in your (or your clients) business endeavors.  

GA is riddled with problems too – inaccuracy in the numbers means skewed stats and that is of pretty much NO use for serious business. If a client is using AdWords, sure, Google Analytics can be a great tool.  I don’t recommend PPC though as a viable marketing plan for a lot of clients as budget restraints preclude it’s use.

Since Google IS the largest SE and marketing venue on the planet it’s wise to look and keep track of what they do, but NOT always necessary to rely on what they report.

I recommend the use of GA for some purposes but have many other (more reliable) means of gathering information for clients and my own businesses.

As far as the keywords issue is concerned, AWstats does the job quite well along with a couple of others.  Getting the BIG picture cannot be obtained when GA is all you put into use.  It’s hard to convince some clients that what they see in GA’s reports is not the gospel truth.  But, when I start showing them reports I have compiled, they finally get the point!

One client in particular (the CEO, no less) studies GA every single day (they use Adwords too) and I see why GA is a real necessity, for them.  Mainstream keywords can be a hard thing to get a fix on for organic search for many businesses, but certainly not impossible by any means.  Companies with large marketing budgets can really see what they are paying for with PPC so GA comes in pretty handy, in that scenario.

GA is just one tool and my guess on the keywords thing is that at some point they want to charge (more in the case of PPC) for that information. If Google goes this route (at some point) you’ll hear the resulting outcry on the MOON. Heh.

.02

Google Analytics allows me to find out how users interact with the page explore demographics & track sales funnels etc…

Recently Google performed a major over haul on the analytics interface. you can watch a 6 part recorded webinar series (each part is about an hour long)  on how to use it here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulr9eK4er-Y&list=PL8CAAA05A0C16E5EC

@ptwylie

I run multiple analytics options concurrent with GA and so far I haven’t had any problems.

About the only way to find out for sure would be to test them together.

@ptwylie

Here is a tool that you can use to test your site speed world wide http://internetsupervision.com/scripts/urlcheck/check.aspx?lan=en-US&checkurl=&email=Enter+Your+Email+Address

Let me know how it works out for you.

@scottmadden Cool tool Scott … I tested my site speed and found that from Chicago (which is no surprise since that is where my server is) served up the fastest times at just over a half a second . What was interesting was that Germany had the same time as LA perhaps because I’m using cloud flare (CDN).

@jasonwiser I am going to install get clicky now I have a benchmark time so will see the outcome.