When you first log in, you will see the Home screen with an overview of your default property ("property" basically means "collection of data to track," and in most cases, just refers to a single website). On this screen, “Extension” is the property.

"University of Maryland" refers to the Google Analytics account. For most AGNR folks, "University of Maryland" will be the only account you have access to.

“All Extension Data” is a View: A collection of website data after filters and settings have been applied to it. It’s possible for every property (website) to have multiple views, but most AGNR users will only see one view per site.

When you first log into Google Analytics (we'll call it GA for short!), it can be a little overwhelming. If you’re just getting started, try exploring the options below to get a feel for how GA works and the kinds of things you can learn from it.

Types of Reports

The left sidebar of the reporting interface shows a list of every report available.

If you click on any of the triangles to the left of the text, the menu will expand to show more options! This can seem like an endless array, but it all can basically be distilled into the “big three:”

• Audience – Characteristics of the people visiting your site and the technology they’re using
• Acquisition – How people arrived at your site
• Behavior- What people are doing on your site

Everything else in Google Analytics is basically different ways of viewing the data above.

Many AGNR users seem to find the most value in the "Behavior" reports, so you may want to start there first.

Making sense of a report

Almost every report you visit in Google Analytics will look similar to the one at right, consisting of two parts:

1. A graph showing how one metric (measurement) has changed over time
2. A table showing a dimension and various metrics related to it.

What's a dimension? Well, in GA terms, it is a single "thing to keep track of."

In the example, the Primary Dimension is the URL of a page. Each row in the table examines one page URL and reports on various metrics related to that page.

The top row (where no page URL is listed) shows a summary of all the pages on the site.

Your desired date range

No matter where you go in Google Analytics, you’ll want to make sure that you’re viewing statistics for the appropriate date range. I like to view a month of data. Sometimes a whole year is more appropriate. Rarely, you might want to just view a day or a week. Whatever you prefer, set it using the dropdown at the upper right of your screen.

The date settings you select will persist throughout Google Analytics until you change them again.

Using a Dashboard

If you find yourself coming to Google Analytics often and know exactly what you want to see, you might want to customize a dashboard so you can get a quick overview.

Each Google Analytics view comes pre-set with a starter dashboard: a screen with a variety of tables and graphs so you can get a quick overview of how your site is doing.

In the left menu, go to Customization > Dashboards, then click "My Dashboard."

You will be taken to a screen showing report widgets. Each widget contains a set of data about your visitors— geographical locations, browser usage, visits, new visitors, and more.

Click the title of any widget to be taken to the full report for that set of data.

For a more personally tailored view, you can customize your dashboard.