How to Add Google Analytics to Your Blogger Blog

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If you are new to blogging at Blogger.com you might not be aware that tracking and statistics software can easily be linked to your site to provide you with details about your visitors. The process of adding a free tracking program like Google Analytics is a pretty straightforward one. By following the simple instructions below you will gain access to very useful data about the people accessing your site. This will help you grow your site and target your content to meet the needs of your visitors.

How to Add Google Analytics to Your Blogger Blog

1. Login to Google Analytics at http://google.com/analytics using your Google ID. If for some reason you wish to create a new account you can do so, but be aware that you will lose the advantages of accessing other Google services such as Google Webmaster Tools and Google Adsense without having to login once again.

2. Sign Up to Google Analytics by clicking on the Sign Up button. You will be taken to the Analytics - New Account Signup page. Enter your blog URL, account name, country, and time zone on this page.

URL: You would enter nameofyourblog.blogspot.com or your private domain (if you registered one)

Account Name: It is a good idea to choose a non-specific name such as Tom's Account because this will be the account name for anything from 1 to 100 websites.

Then click on Continue.

3. On the next page you will be prompted to enter your personal details: your name, phone number, and country. Complete these and click on Continue.

4. The final sign up page is the Terms of Agreement screen. Once you agree to these your sign up is complete.

5. Now Google Analytics provides you with a code block of JavaScript that you need to add to your site.

Highlight the block of code, then use the command Ctrl + C to quickly copy the code to the clipboard of your computer. Leave the window open as you are going to return there.

6. In a new tab or window login to your blog at Blogger.com and navigate from the Dashboard to Layout.

7. Layout --> Edit HTML (third from the left after Page Elements and Font and Colors). You are going to be adding a little bit of code to your template, so care needs to be taken not to overwrite any existing code. As a precaution it is advisable to backup your template by choosing to Download Full Template to your computer.

8. To add the code to your template you will need to locate the </body> tag. (Press Ctrl + F and enter </body> in the search bar.) If you choose to look for the code by scrolling down you will find it very near the bottom of the template. You will need to paste the code immediately before the </body> tag.

In order to paste the block of code you need to position the cursor in front of the </body> tag and use the command Ctrl + V. Once you are sure the code is positioned correctly within the template click on Save Template. All going well, you have now successfully added Google Analytics to your Blogger blog.

9. Return to Google Analytics. On the Overview page you will see details about your blog such as Reports, Status, Visits etc. If there is a tick in the Status column your Analytics code is working correctly.

If, on the other hand, the Status column contains a yellow triangle symbol with an exclamation mark inside do not despair - it just means that Google has not yet updated the details of your site. Check back in 24 hours. It can take Google a couple of hours from installing the code to actually providing reports, especially if your blog is fairly new.

Once Google Analytics is successfully receiving data about your site, you can begin to make use of the wealth of information available to you.

 

In Case of Trouble

If after a day the status still displays a yellow triangle the code you inserted may not work correctly. A yellow triangle is displayed when the code is not detected or not verified.

Check your Blogger template to ensure the code block is pasted in the correct position.

Further help:

You will find excellent help from Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/support/analytics/.

For details about why Google Analytics is not able to track your site check out
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en_US&answer=57053&utm_id=ad

 

Related article:

How to Track Visitors to Your Blogger Blog

 

 

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