some words from technology briefcase

Every day, I wake up and read the Google Groups for GA.

Here are  the ten questions I see  just about every day, with answers.
Question 1:  Can’t I reprocess the data in some way? Sorry. Google Analytics doesn’t let you go back and reprocess. A very  best practice is to think about your needs while you are setting up your  analytics, and try to anticipate the future. This includes creation of a  profile for every important campaign that you run, whether you define  “campaign” as a Google AdWords campaign, a banner ad campaign, or an  email campaign.
Question 2: I don’t know how to set up links in my  newsletter. Or, I don’t know how to set up links in the paid  search for non-Google search engines.  Answer: Google Analytics has a  nice linkbuilder tool to solve this problem, but I like ROI Revolution’s better.  It is more intuitive, and  it doesn’t have any typos . You can use the linkbuilder to code the  links in any of your marketing campaigns — your email marketing, your  Yahoo campaigns, your banner ads. (You don’t have to code Google  AdWords, the default in AdWords is auto-tagging — it codes for you.)  Once external links are coded, they’ll talk to your GA.
Question 3.  Why can’t I get rid of the site overlay? You’ll need to clear your cookies. The Site Overlay activates if the  GA tracking code sees the “GASO” cookie when you visit your website.  Just use Firefox, choose Tools>Options>Show cookies and type in  GASO. Delete that cookie.
Question 4.  Why is my site overlay broken? If you  make any changes to your Request URI — for example, if you ask to only  see page titles and not /mypage.com — the site overlay will not work for  the profile where you have the changes made.  You should set up a clean  profile without those changes.  (To be honest, I feel like the site  overlay is just about always broken, and I am awed when I see people ask  questions about why they can’t get a specific piece of data from it. ) (continue reading…)