Google Analytics

I send reports to my guest bloggers if they request them so they can see who is reading their blog entries and how many hits they get. When I shared this report with Jamie, she asked how I got such a report, so I thought I would share.

Google Analytics is a FREE way to track websites. If you have a website, go to the Google Analytics site and follow the easy steps to track your website or blog, and within 24 hours you will have all kinds of data.

To give you an idea of the data you can collect, I thought I would give you some data from this blog. I started tracking the date on April 30th. I have had 1,658 visits. My highest spike in hits by day were the posts about my friend David Twomey, and second was the post about the Tonys. If you look at individual page hits, though, it would be David first, and then the post about working for the St. Louis Rep.

I average 21 hits per day and average 31 hits on weekdays. Most people that visit my site are from the U.S., but I get visitors from other countries as well, including the United Kingdom, Japan, Russia, Sweden, and the Philippines, just to name a few. I receive the highest number of hits from D.C., Missouri, Virginia, Maryland, and New York, in that order.

So go! Start tracking your website and learn who is looking at it. It could help you in marketing, or at least give you some fun facts to share when talking about your blog.