

Advanced Google Analytics for Startups - commondream
http://thinkvitamin.com/business/analytics/google-analytics-tweaks/

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paraschopra
One major flaw with Google Analytics is its last click attribution which
simply distorts your view of where traffic is coming from. If visitor first
came via a Tweet, reads about your product and the next day he searches or
types in your web address, GA would attribute the last traffic source as the
real source of this visitor. You would never realize that it was tweet that
brought him to the website.

Seldom any visitor converts on first visit and so it becomes extremely hard to
calculate true conversion rate for different mediums in GA. How would you know
which medium is most effective?

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lmkg
Google Analytics has a No-Override feature for traffic attribution, which is
disabled by default:

[http://code.google.com/intl/en/apis/analytics/docs/gaJS/gaJS...](http://code.google.com/intl/en/apis/analytics/docs/gaJS/gaJSApiCampaignTracking.html#_gat.GA_Tracker_._setCampNOKey)

I haven't worked with this setting myself so I can't say whether it works on
all traffic sources or only campaigns. First Referrer information is stored in
one of the GA cookies, so it's always available on the page, even if it's not
getting passed to the GA servers. If you really wanted to get creative, you
could yank it out of the cookie and throw it into a Custom Variable. This has
the advantage of giving you First _and_ Last Attribution, in different
reports.

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AdamTReineke
What are really good resources on using Google Analytics? I don't check more
than my pageviews, referrers and popular search terms, but I know that barely
scratches the surface of what it can do.

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janesvilleseo
A really great resource is Google's Conversion University. They have video
lessons and if you want a test you can take at the end to get certified.
(disclaimer: I am certified)

[http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/bin/reque...](http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/bin/request.py?hl=en&contact_type=indexSplash&rd=1)

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ryancarson
What did you have to do to get certified?

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tpiddy
you take an online test ($50) and have to get 80% correct to get the
individual qualification.

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micmcg
A well written guide, but I'm not sure what it has to do with startups
specifically, except for link bait

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benologist
Most have websites and GA is a ridiculously popular analytics platform for
websites.

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micmcg
Yes but why is it "Advanced Google Analytics for Startups" and not "Advanced
Google Analytics" or "Advanced Google Analytics for Websites"?

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ryancarson
Because Alan (the author) learned and implemented this advanced GA strategy in
our startup. It's something specifically that should be done in startups that
will help increase profitability. Basically, it's all about using GA in
startups. I think that qualifies for adding "startup" to the title ;)

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thomasbachem
You should also have a look at my server-side Google Analytics client
<http://code.google.com/p/php-ga> which opens the door for many many advanced
usages.

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leftnode
I've been looking for something like this. Thank you!

