leifw

Google is forthcoming with details of how analytics works, but they don't present it in a nerd friendly way. The data is wrapped up inside of videos instead of dumped as text. I may have been able learn this by watching the videos, but it was more fun figure it out by playing with it.

Summary of Google Analytics' Design

• All user data is stored in cookies on the visited site.
• No cookies are set on any Google Analytics Domain.
• Each user has a unique ID on each domain they visit.
• User data is transmitted back to Google Analytics in the query string when requesting a 1x1 GIF.

UML Sequence Diagram of Google Analytics' Design

Analyzing the pieces of Google Analytics Data

• Definitions of each of the utm* cookies
• Descriptions of the pieces of data in query string for utm.gif