Website Analytics URL Display Problem

Video segment 7 of 12 - click here to watch the full video.

The basic reports in Google Analytics are very similar to Urchin. For example, Google has it's own version of the reports we've already looked at in Urchin.

The visitor overview screen shows visits (sessions in Urchin), and page views. We've mentioned that Google doesn't track "hits"--no matter--the data on hits report is useless as we've seen. I like how Google displays my stats in both graphs and numeric reports. It's very clean and easy to read and easy to use.

Just like in Urchin we have visits, page views, time on site, and bounce rates. Similarly, under the Content tab we'll find the most viewed list which here they call "Top Content." One thing I really like about Google's system is that they have the Top Content by page title. Typically, traffic reports use a web page's file names in their reports. This can be a problem for sites whose file names are obscured by database driven IDs and codes that don't easily differentiate one page from another.

For our site there's not much difference because we've implemented a feature makes our file names and page titles very similar. But if you did have undecsriptive URLs you could use this title view to list the pages using each page's browser title instead of the URL. And if you're doing the right thing with your browser titles--describing each page's subject for maximum search engine optimization this list view will be much more helpful than the URL display.   next >