Google Analytics – Top reports to get started – Map Overlay

Google Analytics

I am a huge fan of Google Analytics. I think a lot of people login to this tool, look at visitors, visits, page-views and then don’t really know what to do. I am just going to list some of the basic reports I like to look at over the coming week. First on the list is the map overlay:

You can see from this image it gives you a good graphical representation of where your traffic is coming from. The areas which are more dense in color represent your hot spots. This is dependent on what you are looking at. In the example given. I am looking at visits so it shows my top locations.

What’s nice is to cross reference some of these reports. I may want to look at Transactions and check if my hop spots for visitors are translating to conversions.

In this case they are not. So this is something I would look at.

You can zoom into city level again the darker the colour the more volume you are getting.

Once you are zoomed in, you can cross segment this by changing the drop down box named “Dimension” to medium. This way you can see where your traffic is coming for that city.

This report allows you to

1. Identify new locations for potential traffic. Perhaps you are receiving traffic from a country, which you don’t run a PPC campaign in. Well maybe it’s time you should.
2. It enables to to run very effective geo targeted campaigns.

Related posts:

1. Three Google Analytics Gotcha’s – Misleading Reports
2. Filtered Traffic provides great information :: Google Analytics :: Google Analytics Filters
3. Google Analytics – Segment Your Users by Vists
4. Google Analytics Just Got Better
5. Google Analytics the FAB FIVE

Share