Thursday, September 8, 2011

Google Analytics - Don't Forget the Code

I've had Google Analytics installed on my blogs for quite a while now.  It's fun and interesting to see how many visitors I have, where they come from, what keywords they searched to find me, etc.  But, when I changed the design on this blog - way back in April - I forgot to re-install the code.  I had Google Analytics set up to email me if my traffic started dropping, but then I just ignored those emails.  I had posted something about Charlie Sheen which seemed fairly popular, and I just figured it had run its course.  Yeah, it doesn't do any good to have good tools if you don't use them!

I stopped getting the emails, and I forgot about it - until I changed the design on my other blog and started getting those emails about that blog.  For some reason, even though I had copied the code from my old template to the new one, it wasn't working - so I logged into Google Analytics and started looking for the code I needed.  That's when I realized that it hadn't been recording anything for this blog since April!

It took a bit for me to find the code, so I thought I'd share where to find your code on Google Analytics.  First of all, log into your Analytics account.  If you don't have one, you can sign up for free and start adding your own sites.  If you've already got an account and added sites, you'll see them all listed.  Next to the site you want the tracking code for, click edit - you'll find it on the far right side.  (click the image to get a better view)


On the next page- top, right side - you'll see a link that says Check Status.  Click that.  There you will find the code you need to add to your site.  You will need to edit the html of your site (under template in Blogger) and paste the code in right before the </head> tag.  Save the template, and the code should start tracking your visitors and receiving data.  As you can see (if you actually clicked that image above(, now that I've re-installed my Google Analytics tracking code, my traffic has increased 90,800%!  Well, anyway, it went from ZERO (that Google Analytics knew of) to several visitors a day - and once again I can see where they came from, how they got here, and how long they stayed.

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