Question:
I am using Google Analytics and I wonder how it technically works to track unique users by just entering the Java-Script snippet at the bottom of each HTML-page. Also: Does Google Analytics somehow discount for bots and robots from e.g. search engines which should not be counted as “real traffic”?
Answer:
Google use a special id in the code specific for country and member of Analytics program:
_uacct = “UA-xxxxxx-1″;
When some users browser ask some page to download, it sends to addressed server ‘hello’.
Then the server sends asked page to user, but rendered page on unload sends ‘hello’ to Google (urchin code!), saying ‘page AA was downloaded by browser YY on server ZZZ’.
Google’s database says ‘ok, guys! I’d put in everything. See you later!’
This way we have detailed analytics for our html-pages, as Javascript language has more than 30 parameters describing users monitor, color depth, OS, local time, server, browser, etc.
Of course, Google sees who visits page, as every search bot has its own name. Google doesn’t count that as a real traffic.
