How do I Open a Google Account?

Firstly, what is a Google Account?

A Google Account is a “single sign-on” service by Google attached to a single email and password that you can use to access multiple Google services, including Google Analytics, Google Groups, Google Alerts, Google Product Search, Personalized Search, and Personalized Homepage. If you currently use one of these services, you probably already have a Google Account that you can use to access Google Analytics.

However, because the data collected by Google Analytics is commercially confidential, you should only access Google Analytics for your organization with a corporate email address and not a personal one. This is to ensure your organization can keep track of who has access to the web analytics data Google Analytics is collecting.

How do I know if already have a Google Account?

To check if you already have a Google Account:

1)                   Go to Google.co.uk or your preferred Google search domain and check the right hand sign of the screen for “Sign in”. If “Sign in” is displayed  as  below then go to step 3:

2)                   If  “Sign out” is displayed instead then you already have a  Google Account and the email address you are using is associated with a Google Account which is displayed  in the top right corner of your screen:

 

3) Chance are then, you don’t have a  Google Account, but by trying to reset the password for your email address, Google will  confirm if you have one or not. So go to https://www.google.com/accounts/ForgotPasswd? and enter your corporate email address in the field provided.

4) Once you've entered the Captcha tag, if your email address is not recognised by Google then Google will tell you it can’t recognise the email and it’s confirmed you don’t have a Google Account. You should, then create a Google Account by going to step 6 below.

5) If the password reset process continues, you have a Google Account and you can either continue on and reset your password  (because it would seem you have forgotten setting this Google Account up!) or use the password you already have with the Google Account. You need do no more but simply click on  Google Analytics once you've logged in to your Google Account.

6) Go to https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount and create a Google Account by entering your corporate email address, selecting a suitable password and so on...

Analytics in a Box Urchin UTM Configuration

Now we've recently become a Coradiant Reseller for Analytics in a Box, we've just had our first box delivered  and a number of clients are beginning to ask how the box can be used  in traditional Urchin IP & User Agent mode and UTM (Urchin Traffic Monitor)  mode. Well, here's how it's done and the necessary files (__utm.gif and urchin.js)  to do it:

Case 1: Using IP-UserAgent Tracking No additional external configuration is necessary. When adding profiles, be sure to specify "IP+UserAgent" as the Visitor Tracking Method.  

Case 2: Using Urchin with UTM Tracking To use Analytics in a Box with UTM tracking, it is necessary to install a small piece of JavaScript tracking code on each of your website's pages. Here are the instructions: Place urchin.js and __utm.gif files (see below) to the document root of your website (e.g. the top level directory of your content).  On each page of your website, place the following tracking code right after the any META tags in the HEAD section:

When adding profiles to Analytics in a Box, be sure to specify Urchin Traffic Monitor (UTM) as the Visitor Tracking Method.


Files:

www.ivantage.co.uk/downloadarea/download-urchin-6-UTM.zip

Tracking social media with google analytics

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Tracking social media with google analytics

View more presentations from ivantage.

Tracking Facebook with Google Analytics

Tracking Facebook with Google Analytics

When I talk about tracking Facebook with Google Analytics, I’m really talking about two key aspects: 1) Tracking how much traffic we receive from Facebook and 2) Understanding the actual traffic visiting a Facebook profile. So, how can we use Google Analytics to address these two important but distinct requirements?

1) Tracking traffic from Facebook

Tracking the traffic you are receiving as a result of your presence on Facebook can, to a certain extent, be accomplished with Google Analytics. Assuming your website is tagged with Google Analytics, by default, log-out users following links to your site on Facebook will show up in the “Referring Sites” report.

As the picture illustrates below, you can filter the Referring Sites report to filter-in on social media sites with a filter such as: “youtube|flickr.com|digg.com|facebook|myspace|twitter|stumbleupon|techorati.com|del.icio.us|reddit.com”

Unfortunately, logged in users following links to your site on Facebook reach Google Analytics as a “Direct” source of traffic. This seems to be as a result of Facebook blocking the referral information.

So, although we might not see the full extent of the traffic coming from Facebook because many users will be logged in and posting their own links, we can, however, get in control of any links that we post.

The best way to do this is to build a campaign tracking URL using the Google Analytics URL builder. Then shorten the URL using something like bit.ly or some such service. So in effect:

You can see more detailed instructions on this in on slideshre.net.

This approach will work really well on Twitter too.

2) So how do you measure what’s happening on your Facebook profile?

 

This seems to be pretty difficult at the moment. The official way is to use the fb:google-analytics function. However, this code can only be inserted on the Canvas page, leaving other pages such as the fan pages untagged.  A popular hack seems to be using Webdigi’s image tagging solution.  However, this has some downsides which I’m currently investigating and will provide an update on soon.