It is often be useful to know where a site’s visitors come from. It helps marketers make sure they are marketing the right products to the right people. If a marketer is promoting snowshoes and the majority of their site visitors come from Florida it’s not a recipe for success. Steps would need to be taken to either generate some more appropriate traffic or chance the marketing focus. The one could be achieved by the use of geographically targeted pay per click campaign, the other by switching the product to something more appropriate to the needs of site visitors—such as designer sunglasses. The second option wouldn’t be viable for a marketer running a snowshoe production company, but it might be for an affiliate marketer running a non-snowshoe-specific site. The above is probably an extreme example, but it’s always good to know as much as possible about site visitors, and their geographic location is just one of many things that can be revealed by Google Analytics. Experienced analytics users need read no further, this will going over old ground. Not familiar with Google Analytics? Read on . . .
For sheer range and versatility of use it’s hard to beat Google Analytics so any time spent becoming familiar with the system is time well spent and the wealth of reports and statistic available can provide a valuable insight into all aspects of site performance.
*To benefit from Google Analytics webmasters will need to create an account and add the tracking code to their site pages. More about that here.
How to Find Site Visitors’ Geographic Location by using Google Analytics
(1) Log into the system and select the required site. Be aware of the date range at the top of the page. In the picture below the range is set for one month (May 11 to June 10), but the time period can be changed via the dropdown menu (beside the date range).
(2) Look to the left of the page and click on ‘Geo’ to open the dropdown menu. (3) Then click on ‘Location’. A world map will appear. The darkest areas represent the places that deliver the most traffic.
Below the map will be a list of the top ten countries. In the picture below you will notice the US provides three times the amount of site visitors than the UK, and it is worth noting the site in question is a ‘.co.uk’ site, hosted on servers located in Southern England.
Clicking on the ‘United States’ link’ reveals the site received more visitors from California than any other state (during the selected time period).
This is all useful information that savvy internet marketers can put to good use. Setting the date range to show data for the last 12 months may be advisable as traffic specifics can often be affected by seasonal trends.
