| Today, people are more mobile and so is the Internet. People pay bills, read news, do shopping, and more using their mobile devices.
Website owners should be aware of this fact and design their sites to be mobile-device friendly. |
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The first questions a web analyst will be asked by website owners are: how many people visit my site using mobile devices, what is special about this segment of users, and what can I do to optimize my site for mobile device marketing?
Thanks to Google Analytics, answering these questions is as easy as 1, 2, and 3!
- Create a data filter to include only traffic from mobile devices.
- Create a profile and include the filter created in the first step.
- View data.
1. Create a new data filter to capture only traffic from mobile devices
- Go to: Analytics Settings -> Filter Manager -> + Add Filter
- In the “Filter Pattern” box, add the list of mobile devices you would like to include in your report separated by the pipe character | (Vertical Bar).
Note: Google Analytics can only track web browsers that execute JavaScript.
2. Create a profile (Ex. Mobile Devices)
- Go to: Analytics Settings -> Add Website Profile.
- Check the “Add a Profile for an existing domain” radio button.
- Apply the filter created in step 1 - Mobile Devices Users - into this new profile
3. View data
Select the Mobile Devices profile. All of the data in this profile is now just for mobile devices’ visitors.
2 Pings to “Tracking Mobile Devices in Google Analytics”
5 Responses to “Tracking Mobile Devices in Google Analytics”
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1. Craig Says:
September 9th, 2008 at 3:44 PMThis is a great post. I’m looking for a master list of devices to put in the filter pattern. I can’t find anything on GA’s help section. Where did you discover that list?
Thanks!
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2. Rehan Asif Says:
September 9th, 2008 at 5:33 PMThis list was compiled from looking at the Operating System report for several different websites.
Maybe someone else who reads your comment might know of a website that has a list of the most common mobile/non-computer operating systems.
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3. hemant budhivant Says:
October 6th, 2008 at 9:18 AMhttp://www.noeman.org/gsm/pocket-pc-smartphone-zone/37054-list-mobile-phone-operating-system.html
this is link where you’ll get all the mobile OS in the world
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4. Dean Collins Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 7:50 AMLol - hmmm hate to say this but how exactly is this going to work for the 90% of handsets that dont work with Google Analytics……?
There are 9 specialist mobile analytics vendors out here.
You can only track mobile browsers accurately by using one of these specialist vendors.Cheers,
Dean Collins
http://www.Amethon.com -
5. Rehan Asif Says:
October 9th, 2008 at 11:35 AMThank you for your comments, Dean.
At this point Google Analytics is not specialized at mobile tracking.
And obviously it only works on mobile devices that support JavaScript.
For very detailed and precise mobile tracking, you would need to go with a specific solution.However, the number of devices that support JavaScript is growing.
And you might only be interested in seeing how owners of popular devices like the iPhone are interacting with your website.
And for that, Google Analytics gives you what you need to know.We know Google Analytics is only going to get better and more powerful.
We hope one day it will include better mobile tracking.
October 4th, 2008 at 7:49 AM
[...] Full post with screenshots here. [...]
October 27th, 2008 at 4:01 PM
[...] I would like to use this amazing feature in viewing a nice report for my last blog post, Tracking Mobile Devices in Google Analytics [...]