How is Google Analytics tracking the interactions of the users in the website?
Google Analytics makes the amazing job (for free) of collecting data and compile them into useful reports.
To track what is happening on your website, you first need to create a Google Analytics account. Then, in each page of your website you would like to track, you need to install a unique Javascript tracking code. This piece of code, when a user is coming to your website, will collect anonymously information about how the user is interacting with a page. The code will run on the browser of the user and place on the users' browser a cookie to create (anonymously) a unique user ID.
Every time a page is loading, the tracking code will collect the information about the user's activity which is grouped in a time period called "session" by Google Analytics. A session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity by the user.
Which kind of information the tracking code is collecting?
Below a list of some of the information that Google Analytics code is able to collect:
1. the language of the browser used by the user
2. the type of device used to navigate in your site (Desktop, Mobile and tablet)
3. the traffic source
4. the type of browser (e.g. Chrome or Safari)
5. location of the user
6. url of the page that the user viewed
💡Some additional notes💡:
💡Google Analytics processes data from the moment you start to track your website. This implies that it won't store any historical data before the tracking has been implemented.
💡Moreover keep in mind that Analytics uses cookies to differentiate between new and recurring users. If a user deletes the cookies in his browser, when he will visit again your site, it will be counted as new user by Analytics. Simply put: if a user disables Javascript in his browser, Analytics won't be able to track him.
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