Google Analytics - Traffic Sources Overview

The next report in the Google Analytics suite is the Traffic Sources Overview. This is a very basic snapshot of your traffic reports. However, these mini-reports are so useful at a glance that I prefer to add them to the main dashboard instead of the reports that are there by default! The Traffic Sources Overview looks like this:

As you can see, there's really only four high-level reports on this page:

1. A Visits graph/timeline
2. Traffic sources segmentation listing and pie chart
3. Top 5 traffic sources listing by URL/category
4. Top 5 keyword traffic sources listing

All reports but the first can be drilled down on to view the full, detailed report.

Traffic Sources Segmentation Listing and Pie Chart

Depending on the nature of your website, the strength of your brand, and your focus on SEO or SEM, these percentages can vary widely. When a website is first launched, direct traffic and referring sites will no doubt account for the larger percentages of traffic sources. However, over time as your content is indexed and you engage in PPC campaigns, search engine traffic (both organic and paid) will no doubt become a larger slice in the pie. A well optimized site can easily obtain over 50% of its traffic from search engines.

Top 5 Traffic Sources

This is slightly more detailed than the previous report, in that it doesn't generalize search engines and websites - it breaks them out individually. It even separates PPC from Organic search traffic. However, it is only the top 5 sources, so now doubt you'll need to drill down. Regardless though, this is an excellent metric to add to the Dashboard.

Top 5 Keywords

This is pretty self-explanatory. Depending on how long it takes your site to be indexed, this table may remain empty for a while with a new site. This report also does not differentiate between organic and PPC keywords; you need to drill down for that.

Something to expect with this report is that for quite a while you won't be getting organic traffic for the keywords you're targeting with the site. It will take time to rank well enough to attract traffic for broader keywords, so initially this report will fill up with long-tail queries (unless you're using PPC right away).

Anyhow, as you can see, this is a pretty basic report. But the metrics are pretty useful, usually more so than the default metrics on the application dashboard!