Using Google Analytics to Find Out Who Is On My Website

Using Google Analytics to Find Out Who Is On My Website

I have installed Google Analytics code on my site, can I find out who has visited my site?
The answer is yes and no. While you cannot find the specific person who visited your site we can get pretty close. We can find what Google calls the Service Provider, but if the visitor is using a static IP address like most major companies the WhoIs information will appear in place of the Service Provider.
 
Let’s begin accessing this information.
 

  1. Log into your Google analytics account.width=600
  2. Select Service Provider under System and view the full reportwidth=600
  3. Begin to click through your Service Providers until you see one you are interested in you should skip known ISPs, they cover too broad of an area, we are looking for Static IPs which will typically be a company name.
  4. If you know the name you are looking for type it into the search bar to determine if they visited your site.width=600
  5. Once you have found the Service Provider Name (in the example case it will be “wendy s international inc.”) click on advanced segments in the top left corner and create a new custom segment.width=600
  6. Give your Custom Segment a name and set it to *Include* *Service Provider* *Containing* and type in the name from step 4, save your segment.
  7. Click Advanced Segments again and uncheck All Visits (on the left) and ensure your new custom segment is checked (on the right) and select Apply.

 
Now all reports apply only to this “Service Provider” which is really the Static IP of your visitor. Use the Location reports to find out what city and state they are from, use the Technology reports to find the browser and OS, Use the Traffic Sources to find what search engine and keywords they used to find your site, or what site they linked from, and of course content reports to determine what pages they looked at and for how long.
There are many more reports within Google Analytics to get more in-depth information but these are the basics.


 

One thought on “Using Google Analytics to Find Out Who Is On My Website

  1. Rich Kreider Post author

    Very cool, this worked really well when investigating boston scientific corporation. I saw they visited my WMIC CPU Usage page. Nice how-to!
    I was able to learn that Google Inc visited 2x on Aug 23 and Microsoft Corp visited a blog post about one of there commands (WMIC CPU Usage) on Sept. 1.

    Reply

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