How to set up Google Analytics and monitor your traffic - Page 2 - Virtual Assistant Forums

Tess · #11 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

Originally Posted by VagabondetteVA

Is there a way in GA to see what outlinks people clicked on while visiting your site? I know you can do the overlay view where they put the % of clicks on top of the link, but that's annoying and I'm not sure it's accurate. On wordpress.com their general stats included a "people clicked on the following links" section and I found it HUGELY helpful. I liked knowing where I was sending traffic...

Thanks

Yes, log into your Google Analytics account, click on the site you want to view stats for, click on CONTENT in the main sidebar menu

Then choose OVERVIEW
Then SITE OVERLAY

Wait for it to load, voila

(mouse over the little percentage blocks for more details)

VagabondetteVA · #12 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

Thanks Tess,

Like I said, I know that method and I don't trust it or like it. I get different % on different pages and it's a pain to have to click on each blog post/page to see what people clicked on that page rather than just seeing a summary of all of the links clicked on the entire site.

Is there another way?

Tess · #13 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

You can always install something like Sitemeter that just lists clicks in and clicks out by link.
I don't know if there's a similar readout on Google Analytics, I've never looked for one.

VagabondetteVA · #14 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

Yeah, that's what I thought I might have to do. meh...one more thing to think about.

I'm surprised they don't have something like this. I find it really useful...

Codehead · #15 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

From my experience you can trust the stats Google Analytics provides it's not 100% accurate but it's good enough

VagabondetteVA · #16 (**permalink**) 05-29-2008

Honestly it's less than than the need to visit every. single. page in order to see the results instead of just looking at a report. And there's no easy way to do a side-by-side comparison of different links.

For example, the blog carnivals. I'd love to be able to look at the clicked-on links in a list so I can see which get the most attention and see if there's a pattern. But there's no way to do that unless I go to each carnival page, manually enter the data into excel and then sort it. What a waste.

I just find it very inconvenient, bordering on useless. But then, I don't learn from images I learn from text so...

Everything else is laid out in a list, I don't see why they did this part differently.

#17 (**permalink**) 06-17-2008

Google analytics is good, but if you would like to track on real time, you can use http://www.hittail.com, it is free and also helpful for long tail keywords.