In this lesson, you'll learn what Google Analytics is, what it does, and who benefits from its use—individuals with personal websites, businesses selling products and services, and nonprofit and informational websites working to get their message across. You'll look at the key reports that Google Analytics provides. Also, you'll find out how all those visits to your site turn into data you can use to increase traffic and to make the most impact on each visitor.

Today you'll set up a Google Analytics account, plus you'll create and insert the Google Analytics code to begin tracking traffic on your Web page.

Did that marketing campaign or email blast cause an uptick in site sessions? If you set date ranges for your Analytics data, you can track traffic within a certain month, week, day, or even hour. Today you'll also use filters and sorting tools to customize your view of your Google Analytics data, so you can see and understand all the information you need (and ignore the rest).

You can use Google Analytics' reporting tools to create your own versions of existing reports—just the information you want, when you want it. Today you'll set up report categories and design custom reports from scratch.

Have you ever overhauled your website or your marketing campaign and then wondered if your changes would even make a difference? Today you'll further customize existing and new reports by adding filters—focusing your report's data on very specific activity by certain visitors to your site. You'll find out how to time your reporting to reflect changes in site traffic attributed to promotional activity, social media, and changes in site content.

This lesson focuses on Google Analytics' Webmaster Tools—from the verification process, through which Google Analytics recognizes your account as belonging to a webmaster, to configuring and viewing webmaster reports. These reports include information on your site's search engine optimization—tracking your efforts to be more friendly to search engines and therefore searchable by more people online.

Now that you've improved your site, why not promote it? It's time to learn how to set up Web campaigns through Google AdWords. By the end of this lesson, you'll know how to track the impact of campaigns and AdWords advertising through specially created Google Analytics reports.

You know how important it is to set goals in your career, your education, and even your personal life. In this lesson, you'll find out how to develop Google Analytics Goals for building traffic to your website. What you learn today will help you increase site traffic and make that traffic more effective . . . by attracting more visitors, keeping them for longer periods, and turning visits into clicks and other actions.

Google Analytics data is immediate . . . and in this lesson, you'll learn exactly what that means. You'll view data in real time, within seconds of when user activity occurs. You'll also learn about intelligence events and set up custom alerts to find out about special activity on your sites. Lesson 9 shows you how to improve website traffic and see user responses to your website content and marketing efforts.

It's time to build a dashboard to create a workspace for running reports, accessing Analytics data, and making Google Analytics feel more like "home." You can add metrics to measure your most important statistics; widgets to provide quick views; and pie charts, timelines, and tables to customize your dashboard view.

Today you'll delve into the Admin interface. You'll learn to view established Google Analytics accounts, properties, and views and find out how to add users and determine their roles within your Google Analytics accounts. You'll also find out more about Webmaster Tools, which help you improve your site's searchability and attract new and returning users.

Now that you're an Analytics expert, it's time to share some of that data you've collected and some of the configurations you've created. Today you'll learn how to email reports to colleagues and export data for use in other applications. You'll also customize the settings that control the sharing of Analytics reports and data.