It always feels like ... somebody's watching me.

About a week ago I saw a post that mentioned Google Analytics.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics shows you how people found your site, how they explored it, and how you can enhance the visitor experience. Improve your website return on investment, increase conversions, and make more money on the web.

With over 80 reports, your free Google Analytics account will track visitors through your site, and will keep track of the performance of your marketing campaigns - whether they're AdWords campaigns, email campaigns, or any other advertising program. With this information, you'll know which keywords are really working, which ad text is the most effective, and where your visitors are dropping off during the conversion process. Don't be fooled by the fact that this functionality is available to you for free - Google Analytics is a full-featured, powerful analytics package.

It's been so popular that they've had to limit new sign-ups as they increase capacity. It's a multi-user system as well. If anyone is curious and would like to see inside I'll grant view rights to those that ask. The only requirement is that you need a Google Account, and you need to include that in your request to me.

This is the fruition of the purchase of urchin by Google.

So, What exactly is so cool about GA? There are stats about unique visitors, pageviews, and content optimization. The ability to add multiple users and create and monitor goals are also present. But, the single thing that's got me checking GA each day is the geographic overview. It tells me from which part of the world my viewers are coming from. While I am not surprised that south central Wisconsin is leading the way I am surprised by the traffic from Plano, TX; Rancho Cucamonga, CA; Redmond, WA (Hmmm?); and a fairly surprising number or hits from Europe in cities such as Jönköping, Sweden; Grenoble, Douneau, and Vincennes, France; as well as Lisbon Portugal.

The graph of new vs. returning visitors is surprising if only to me. 60% of my visitors are new... hmm, I should just post a screen-capture...



There, click through for a larger (readable) view.