[Web4lib] google analytics

[Eric Lease Morgan]

Consider exploiting Google Analytics as an alternative/supplement to  
your Web server log file analysis:

   http://www.google.com/analytics/

After visiting the URL above, signing up for and getting a free  
account, you insert a specific piece of Javascript into the HTML code  
of your website. Browsers that come to your site then execute the  
Javascript and send content back to the Google "home planet". After a  
few days you can log into Google Analytics again to see how people  
got to your site, where they went, and how the left. Lot's of charts,  
graphs, summaries describing your audience and their use of the  
content you make available.

When this service was made freely available a few weeks ago, there  
was a long diatribe on Slashdot about putting arbitrary Javascript  
into HTML. There is something to be said about this, but at the same  
time, I trust Google. I sincerely believe they are out to make the  
world's content more accessible, and they aren't being capitalists  
pigs in the process.

-- 
Eric Lease Morgan
University Libraries of Notre Dame