Activating Tracking

Analytics uses a snippet of JavaScript code to track the traffic on your web site
as shown in Figure 4-6. You have to place that code on your site before the
Analytics tracking is activated. It’s not hard to do. All you have to do is copy
the code that Google provides when you set up your account and paste it into
your web site code before the tag at the end of the page.
Save and republish the page, and Google Analytics will automatically detect
the correct placement of the code. This may take a couple days. Or it may happen
quickly. We’ve seen it happen both ways.
The key piece of information in the tracking code is the line that begins
uacct=UA followed by a seven-digit number. This number is unique to each
web site profile, and it tells Analytics which profile owns the ping your site
sends when a page gets loaded.
After you’ve pasted your code into every page you want to track, click
Continue. You will be brought to your Analytics Settings Dashboard shown
in Figure 4-7.
On your Analytics Settings dashboard (which you’ll learn more about in
Chapter 5), you should see a message that indicates the code has been detected
and data are being gathered for the analytics. The detection of the code should
be immediate, but it could take a couple of days for any analytics to appear. In
the meantime, if you click the Check Status option, you’ll be taken to the Status
Tracking page, as shown in Figure 4-8.

Analytics will say whether it detects your tracking code or not and whether
it is waiting for data or receiving data. Depending on how busy your web site
is, it can take several days to several weeks to get enough data into Analytics
to make the graphs mean anything. Regardless, Analytics always shows a listing
of your code on the Tracking Status page in case you misplace it somehow
(for instance, during a site redesign). Click Done when you’re finished with
the page to go back to Analytics Settings.

NOTE To track more than one page of your web site, you need to add the
tracking code to every page you want to monitor. For example, if you have
15 pages in your web site and you want to track all of those pages, you need
to place the code snippet on every one of those 15 pages. Any pages that do
not contain the tracking code will not be monitored.

At that point, all of the reports and graphics for your site metrics should
appear in your Google Analytics account. Google Analytics is a historical analytics
program, which means statistics are not tracked in real time. The statistical
data that appear in your analytics reports will be one to two days behind. It’s not
a perfect solution, but despite the delay, the depth of information provided is
both accurate and useful.