Google Analytics and Visitor Tracking

There was a time when Google Analytics was a useful tool for authors of small non-commercial websites. Now, and for the last number of years it has been less so.

Before Google changed the way it offered Google Analytcs to webmasters for free you had access to items such as the Search Term that a visitor used to find your website. The situation now, and it has been for some while, is that you either see "Not Supplied" or "Not Avalable" in that slot in GA. My guess that the difference is whether the user is logged into a Google Account and Google use this information to track their own users. A web user with a Google Account is one that uses GMail or one or more of the Google "Cloud" services (Drive, Maps, YouTube etc).

Monthly Reports

When I look at my mothly reports I really wonder why I bother!

Observed Searches and Visits:

I used to have a section on my web pages (and template) that I recorded searches. I have now removed the section from the template. Pages before this change may still have this section at the bottom of the page below the page footer.

Tracking Code:

The tracking code that Google advise webmasters to use to enable Analytics on their websites consist of a Javascript function that needs to be placed in the header of pages that your want to track visits. I am now pretty certain that there is clear instruction that this code should be on each page to be tracked and not in a linked Javascript (.js) file. This has become obvious to me now that I have attempted to analyse the Javascript that I am using.