- Web Publishing
- Google Analytics
Using Google Analytics at Yale
Yale University recommends that Yale site managers who wish to collect aggregate usage statistics use the free Google Analytics service to collect site metrics. Google Analytics (GA) can provide a wealth of information on general traffic through your site, what content is most heavily read, and other useful statistics for analyzing the way people use your website.
Yale University requires that all University sites that use Google Analytics (or any other web analytics software) do two things to comply with University policy:
1. Post a link to Yale's privacy policy in the footer of all site pages, as you can see at the bottom of this page, for example.
2. As part of the Google Analytics set-up process (see below), please add the general Yale University user "yale.metrics@gmail.com" as a "View reports only" user of your Google Analytics accounts for Yale sites. This assures that the University has a means to view and collect statistics on official Yale sites. See the footnote below for more about this.
How to set up a Google Analytics account for your site
First, check with your department or school to see if anyone else is using Google Analytics (GA), as you may be able to simply join the department GA account, or you may discover that you already have statistics on your site that are collected as part of the general department or school site. Viewing your site's analytics data within the context of your broader department or school data may actually be more useful to you than viewing just your own site data.
You will need a Google Gmail email address to sign up for Google Analytics, as will any other users whom you will share your data. If you don't already have a gMail account, sign up for one at Google Accounts.
Signing up for an account
Go to the Google Analytics page and sign up for an account.
Pay close attention to the HTML code Google Analytics provides at the end of the sign-up process, and follow Google's instructions carefully to add the GA JavaScript code to the end of your HTML page files.
What you do next depends on how your website was created:
- If you are using YaleSite web content management service, all you need from your Google Analytics JavaScript code is the account number within the code (example: UA-9112073-11).
- If you are coding your own web site, or adding Google Analytics to an existing site that you maintain, follow Google's instructions for adding the Google Analytics code to the bottom of each page's HTML.
