For the past 1 month, I have wrote at least 2 posts which described how you can increase your website traffic using some useful tools or famous websites. Those posts can be found at the bottom left hand corner of this domain, but have you ever wondered that at the end of the day where does your visitors really come from? Are they from the sites that you have tried to promote yourself on like Twitter or Facebook? Or are they from the sites that you are an active member of like Yahoo Answers or some forums? Well, today I will be talking to you about this online tool called the Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is this really helpful service provided by Google (of course), and it has many functions which you can use to monitor your domain. Let me explain to you how Google collect this data, how detailed that data can be and how you can use it for your own benefit (in point form):

How Google collect your data:
-Google has many products such as the Google search engine, Google Chrome, Google maps, Google adsense, Google adwords, Google toolbar, Google gmail and many other Google stuff.
-All of these programs or tools I have mentioned contain cashe which will tell Google everything about you to Google, like your name, age, sex, country you come from and such
-its pretty amazing how Google is able to dominate everyone on this planet who uses internet.
-Now lets move on on how detailed the data given to google can be.

How detailed:
1. Google can pin-point the location of the visitors visiting your domain, like which country they are from
2. Google can identify your ISP (internet service provider). Singapore's Singnet and Starhub, Thailand's TOT or TT&T, and Australia's TPG are some of the example of ISPs
3. Google can identify your internet connection speed (56kbps Dial-up, ADSL broadband or satellite)
4. Google knows how visitors found, and enter your domain, like for example, they know whether if you directly type in a website URL at the address bar and enter the site, or you found that domain on yahoo and enter it from there.

The details I mentioned above is the only the tip of the iceberg. Google can also tell you which city you are from, which language you are likely to speak, which OS you are using (windows or MAC), what is your screen resolution or colour and how many pages you visit in the site. Now heres how you can analyse these data to help you optimise your blog.

Optimize incoming traffic:

From Aussy everyday life

From Aussy everyday life

1. When you first arrive to your Google Analytics homepage, press the 'view report' at the world map at the bottom right on the page. You will be able to see which country has the most number of visitors coming to your site. Knowing this information, you can tweak you website content to better suit the preference of visitors coming from whichever country they are from, it will be more attractive to them this way

From Aussy everyday life

From Aussy everyday life

2. Click on the 'Traffic Sources' tab at the sidebar on your left. You will be able to see which website your visitors are coming from. Click the 'view full report' button to expand the details. For me, a fair bit of my visitors come from answers.yahoo.com. Aha, when you know which website they are from, you can go there to promote your website more, increasing the chances more visitors will come.

From Aussy everyday life

3. Click on the 'visitors tab' and then 'connection speed'. A list of connection speeds for each visitor will come up and you can see which one the majority of your visitors are using. If the majority of your visitors use 56kbps Dial-up connection speed, chances are that you have to reduce the size of your page to make your website accessibility for these visitors easier. For my case the majority use DSL so its not a problem for me.

In conclusion, Google Analytics can really tell you nearly everything you need to know about you visitors, like where they come from and such. So start using it today to increase your traffic! Thank you, that's all, c u