I noticed today that a fair few people are coming to our site looking for information on the structure of Google Analytics cookie values. While this is the kind of topic that might make some peoples eyes glaze over, it's really not very difficult to understand. In fact, Google Analytics cookies are relatively straightforward and easy to understand.

Disclaimer: I haven't worked with these since I started studying for my GAIQ (and the analytics crew isn't here for me to check this with), so its possible that things have changed since. The major details should still be the same.

There are five main cookie types set by GA:

• UTMA - The Visitor Identifier
• UTMB - 30 Minute session identifier
• UTMC - On Exit session identifier 
• UTMV - Custom Variable Cookie
• UTMZ - Visitor segmentation

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We know that Web Analytics, regardless of the vendor solution, is never accurate. It's about trends. However, that's only acceptable, "all things being equal".

But 'None' may point the way to know issues and "all things not being equal".

This series on 'None' will highlight recognizing when 'None' is a problem and the hidden causes which may be bypassing developers writing SiteCatalyst code.

When 'None' is too many

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Boy, does size ever matter - particularly oversize - and, in this post, that's all that matters, so we won't be discussing purpose or technique.

Seriously, this post categorizes SiteCatalyst variables based their length, syntax and other restrictions, to focus on tracking rather than reporting.

Categories of SiteCatalyst Variables

The SiteCatalyst Implementation Manual is ok as a reference work but it is far more instructive to look at SC Variables and their restrictions within a categorisation. Here is one way to categorise them:

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Urchin Analytics is a great product if you need a web analytics product, but can't use a free product like Google Analytics for one reason or another. It provides most of the functionality found in Google Analytics, and is not as expensive as other paid solutions. However, one of the features I find lacking in Urchin is a built-in internal site search report. A site search report would be invaluable in helping you

• identify what people are searching for on your site
• the top search terms
• which search terms lead more to conversion and
• help you to identify potential keywords you should be bidding on or optimizing for in your SEO efforts

If your search results page contains the search terms in the query string, then you could use the "Page Query Terms" report found in the "Content Optimization" Section under "Content Performance". But, this will only give you a count of how many times that search term was used. It's missing very important information like

• if visitors ended up buying anything
• if visitors completed other goals on your website

What if I told you there is a way to build a better site search report? Well, that's the beauty of Urchin. More often than not, you can build the report you are looking for!

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The other day the Google Analytics blog posted one of those simple GA features that always makes me slap my head and exlaim "how did I not know that!?" It ends up that GA has a "pivot" display mode that lets you juxtapose two sets of data. For instance, they recommend take keywords and pivoting by landing page. Not a bad suggestions… well, until you do it.

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Finding meaningful insights in data means knowing how to combine data and make useful comparisons. Insight is in the details. All data in aggregate is "crap". Everyone keeps saying this.

So why is it that reporting suites give you such useless metrics by default?

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Just a reminder to our readers that this month we're putting on another round of Really Understanding Google Analytics. This two seminar series takes an indepth look at a host of Google analytics concepts and issues beginning with understanding the specifics and technical details of Google Analytics and how it tracks data (including solutions for subdomains, cross domain tracking, eCommerce, etc.), and following up with analysis and interpretation.

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If you've got a blog then you likely provide an RSS feed for your readers and you likely track said readers through a variety of different methods, from website analytics (on page), to feedburner - or some other RSS platform's - metrics (process), to mentions, tweets, etc (off page). And you know that you should pay attention to your own metrics, compare only to yourself, improve based on past results. You know that you shouldn't be worried about the metrics of other peoples sites.

But, gosh darn it, that's just no fun.

John showed me this one the other day:

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Aggregate data is a sin, they say. Segmentation is crucial to finding useful information about your users, and ao this week I hit up our SEO team for advice on what custom segments they use. Alex T., Ani L. and myself provided the following 6 metrics that you can use to take a closer look at what your visitors are doing on your site.

Starting from the top:

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Last week I went over how to develop a fairly huge SEO report in Google Analytics. Today we're going to look at how to apply this report to your website, and use it to draw some conclusions about your website.

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