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School of Medicine IT

Google Analytics

Google Analytics tracks user behaviors on your website. This can be useful to see what your most popular content is and track how site visitors navigate your site.

No need to worry about setting Google Analytics up on your School of Medicine (SOM) website. Traffic to all SOM sites is already being collected, you just need access to the data.

Requesting Access

To access Google Analytics, you need a Google account. Because you can have multiple Google accounts, we suggest you create an account for your department/center/program. This will allow you to give analytics access to anyone on your team. It also removes the need to notify us any time someone is hired or leaves your organization.

To request access, please fill out our Website Help Request form. Down in the Comments, please provide the following information:

  1. Let us know you want access to Google Analytics.
  2. Email address of your Google account. Again, we suggest using a work account.
  3. What website(s) you are affiliated with.

Once You Have Access

Once you’ve been notified that you have access, log into Google Analytics with the account you provided. If you are having trouble seeing the analytics data, ensure you are logged into the correct Google account.

The Web Team does not provide training for Google Analytics. We suggest you check out the Google Analytics Academy. They have a lot of great training modules for working in analytics and understanding the data.

med.unc.edu Analytics Property

If you have access to multiple Google Analytics accounts – or if it is the first time ever visiting the med.unc.edu Analytics property, you may need to change the property view to the correct account.

After logging in, in the top-left corner, click on the property view to see which account you are using.

To view all traffic for the med.unc.edu account – use the following property/view:

Filter Data For Your Website

When you log into Google Analytics, you will have access to the full School of Medicine Analytics account. You will likely wish to filter data from the full network down to just your website’s data.

  1. Log into Analytics where you will see the main School of Medicine dashboard.
  2. In the left-hand menu, click on “Behavior” then on “Site Content” and lastly on “All Pages.“
  3. In the search box, type in /yourwebsite and hit Enter (on your keyboard).  For example, med.unc.edu/neurology is just /neurology.

Screenshot of Google Analytics that shows where to add the url of a site to filter for that site's data.

If you need to do this often, you may wish to set up a Segment that allows you to save your filter parameters.

Set Up A Segment

Here are some general directions from Google on how to set up Segments.

Here are more detailed instructions:

  1. Log into Analytics where you will see the main School of Medicine dashboard.
  2. In the left-hand menu, click on “Behavior” then on “Site Content” and lastly on “All Pages.“
  3. Across the top, select the “Add Segment” button.Screenshot of Google Analytics highlighting the buttons to click to create a segment.
  4. In the upper left of the new window, select the red button that says “+ NEW SEGMENT.“
  5. The window that pops up from that is where you will build the new segment.
    1. In the upper left, give the segment a name (e.g.: Neurology)
    2. In the navigation under the segment name, under ‘Advanced,’ select ‘Conditions.’
    3. Set the Filter to ‘Page‘ and then ‘Starts with‘ and finally type in /yourwebsite (e.g.: med.unc.edu/neurology is just “/neurology”).Screenshot of Google Analytics highlighting the steps in the documentation on how to set up a Segment.
    4. Click the blue ‘Save‘ button. This will create a segment on your account that will filter data only for traffic that hits the URL you filtered for (e.g.: Neurology). If you are using a work/shared Google account, only people with that account will be able to see the segment.

View Segment Data

Once you’ve created a segment you can use it to view the analytics for your site.

  1. In the left-hand menu, click on “Behavior” then on “Site Content“.
  2. Depending on the type of data you wish to view, you’ll want to select either All Pages or Content Drilldown. You can use your segment in either section.
  3. By default you will still see analytics for all sites on the SOM network.
  4. To view just your sites analytics, click on the All Users button towards the top of the page. Uncheck All Users and add a checkmark next to the segment you created and hit Apply. If you wish to compare your site’s analytics to all School of Medicine’s, keep the All Users option checked.

Screenshot of the Google Analytics dashboards showing how to use a segment.

 

For more information, check out the Google Analytics Academy. They have a lot of great training modules for working in analytics and understanding the data.