Monday, September 8, 2008

Analyzing Traffic

Google has tons of great tools for webmasters. And the best part is that most of them are free! So, I decided to spend some time mentioning some of Google's free services. They are perfect for non-profits, ministries and whoever else is trying to save some money. This is the first post in a series on free Google resources.

The first Google service I want to mention in Google Analytics. It is a great statistics and web traffic analyzer available to the public. It has all kinds of nifty features and abilities. For instance, it will produce multiple world and country maps of your visitors, it outlines traffic flow, it details traffic sources, records visitor browser information and tons more. You can also set it up so that periodic PDF reports are sent to email addresses you provide--perfect for that monthly report.

It has one drawback: it is javascript based. This means you can only track web page hits, not image loading or anything else. It also means that anyone with javascript disabled will be invisible to the reports. However, with this in mind, Google Analytics is still an amazing resource that everyone should know about.

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