Analytics & Visitor Data Last Updated March 2026 We use Google Analytics to track traffic on our websites and to understand usage and engagement . The Web team provides a monthly report via email to our website editors and owners for each website. We can make it available to others, just contact us. It’s also a possibility if you are an advanced Google Analytics user and wish to have direct access, just contact us. What You Can Learn From Analytics Data analysis can be complex but the web team tries to make it simple with the monthly reports. The Basics Important things to track included in the report are: the number of visitors, pages they are visiting, how they engage (click on, scroll through, download, etc.) where the visitors are coming from and where they’re going when they leave the site, busy times of day, what’s being searched, including on AI search engines, how well your pages are performing on search results, screen sizes and devices used to access the site, demographic info (age and location) of visitors, Social media interactions, etc. Unexpected Traffic The reports can also help identify unexpected traffic or nefarious activity. It could indicate something driving more traffic than expected, which may be a positive or negative. Frequently, spikes indicate bot activity that we may want to block. Never visit a suspected bot website as it may not be safe. You can do a web search for more information, or let us know and we can investigate for you. If you see something that looks weird, please bring it to the web team’s attention. Clicks on Broken Links One of the tables in the report shows referral traffic that came to your site from a broken link. These visitors land on the Page Not Found page. We hope that you will use this information to find out who needs to update their links to your website. Custom Reports For some sites you will find reports for outreach campaign link tracking, cost per click ads, form filters and accordion clicks and other unique reports. Want to know more? As a content creator you know more about the business needs that your web content is trying to achieve than the web team. If you have a specific question about website content, that is not in the reports, we may be able to help. When you are creating particularly important or pressing content and you expect you may need to know more than is available in the monthly report, please, just contact us. Time relevant content reports If you know you are planning an Outreach Campaign to launch on a particular day, it may require setting up tracking before you publish the content. How to Improve Site Search Ranking Tips to help people find your website and make search engines, like Google, weigh your site higher in results. Learn More It’s important for the data to have context. The Nielsen Norman Group article, Translating UX Goals into Analytics Measurement Plans is a good place to start. Find comparison data from international research of Internet trends and users at The Pew Internet & American Life Project. If you’re ready for advanced data analysis, you may be interested in taking Google’s Skill’s Shop for Google Analytics 4 or exploring Google’s Marketing Platforms.
