Observing Traffic Spikes in Google Analytics
Naturally anyone who runs a web presence and more importantly analyzes the data of their web presence may encounter Traffic Spikes that occur on a given day. I found myself observing some days where articles I publish caused traffic to increase the day that they were published. At first I thought “This seems out of the ordinary!” and then left me to wonder “Why and How did this happen?” and “How can I duplicate this effect again?”
Google Analytics is very good at reporting the data that visitors to your website leave behind and put it into simple and easy to use graphs and charts. So you have the ability to capture the data but the real goal is to understand the data and make actionable decisions using that data. For instance this spike that I saw in my Google Analytics account I singled out the traffic for that particular day by clicking on down arrow beside the date range and then selecting the specific day that this traffic spike occurred on and then I clicked “Apply”. From here, you can select all the reports that are specific to that day and funnel out some of the “noise”. If we go to the “Traffic Sources Overview” you’ll notice that the pattern in the traffic being delivered and from there you can gain insights into why and how your website received the traffic that it did.
Luc
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