- [Instructor] Now that we've discussed the value
of Google Analytics to your business
and some key concepts that go along with using the service,
we can finally start to dive into the tool itself.
In order to understand how to install Google Analytics
and to interpret what our reports are showing us,
it's important to first talk
at a very high level about
how Google Analytics actually works.
Now, in order to retrieve data
from users who visit your site,
there are two pieces of information that are required.
First, users who visit your site must allow Google Analytics
to set the first party cookies
that identify the individual users who visit your website.
These cookies will gather data on your users as they travel
through your site such as IP address,
what type of device you're using,
which page they are viewing and more.
Now, if folks have blocked cookies through their browser,
then Google Analytics can't track them
and it won't work for that particular user.
Second, you need to copy the JavaScript tracking code,
also known as a global site tag,
to your sites, so that it runs in the user's browser.
Once you create an analytics account,
you'll be given this unique tracking code
that looks something like this.
Don't worry about the details of the code for now.
Just know this code needs
to be implemented on every single page
of your site with no exceptions.
We'll go over this a little more later,
but this JavaScript tracking code is essential for data from
that webpage to transfer back
to Google Analytics servers for processing.
So speaking of that, how does a segment
of data travel from a user's cookie
to a report on Google Analytics?
Well, let's say that a user's viewing
your website for the first time.
Now remember, your site must
have the JavaScript tag embedded in the HTML of
all of your pages in order to track this user.
So when your user enters a site in their browser,
they access your web server,
this is going to return the HTML
of your browser we use to show that website to the user.
Buried inside of this HTML or the webpage,
we'll have that embedded JavaScript tracking code
which creates and manages the cookies
and collects that anonymous information about
the user from the browser.
As the user continues or journey across your site,
that little tracking tag continues to collect data
and the actions that they take
and this sends this information over
to Google Analytics servers.
It's here in these powerful data centers
where Google process all of this raw data about your user.
Now, depending how much traffic volume you have
and the type of Google Analytics account,
there can be a wide variance in how long it takes
from the time a user sees the webpage until the data
from that session shows up in our reports.
The exact details of this can get a little bit complicated,
but for our purposes, you can use these guidelines.
If you have Google Analytics 360,
which is the paid version of Analytics,
you are guaranteed your site will be processed
in less than four hours,
although it's actually usually much much faster.
Most of you are gonna have the standard free version
of Google Analytics, and in that case,
if you have less than 200,000 sessions per day,
you'll likely to see those sessions processed
within about three or four hours.
Accounts beyond the 200,000 sessions,
sometimes known as visits,
per day, will likely skip this intraday processing
and only process in that one big batch overnight.
In fact, some really large accounts
in the free version may see delays of up to 48 hours
and more until all that data comes in.
And it's worth noting that
if you have more than 10 million hits per month,
Google may force you onto the paid 360 version entirely.
Now, once Google's finished processing this information
within that four to 24 hour timeframe,
the organized data is gonna be
delivered to the user-friendly interface available
to you within the Google Analytics platform.
Here you'll be able to view the numerous reports
and the behavior of users,
which we are going to dive into in the rest of this course.
Now, it's impressive to see how many insights we are
able to glean about your users
from such a simple process here.
Again, this basic overview is
kind of a behind the scenes on how it acquires
and reports on the data.
If you'd like to see a closer look at this process,
do a quick Google search
for Google Analytics Developer Guide,
which explains the tracking
JavaScript tags in glorious detail.
But for now, let's get started putting this to use.