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I'm nerding out on a Saturday morning before the sun comes up. The Deeps waterfall is roaring from all the rain and snow this week. In an hour or so, I'll go trail running, but in the meantime I just installed ClickTale on NorthstarNerd.Org. I'll post my initial results later next week. This service appears to be real cool, not just measuring web analytics, but recording how visitors interact with my web site. In other words, I'll get mouse movement heat maps (where people physically move, hover, and click with their mouse on my web site) and other reports that show how folks interact with my content. Stay tuned.
It's been a while since I posted about our efforts to sell our house. Here are the basic stats after 38 days:
After we rejected the offer for what we deemed too low a price, we went through a period of two weeks with no showings. That drought ended this weekend when two families came by on Saturday afternoon.
Through this process, Molly and I have had HUGE mood swings. 2 weeks ago, it looked like we might have competing offers, and have the house sold and closed by early November. We we're excited, but nervous. Now reality has set in. As we head into the holiday season, we expect action to slow down. I would not want to buy a home between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Our agreement with Edina Realty runs for six months. If at the end of that time frame, we do not have an offer we're willing to accept, we will evaluate hiring a maintenance service for the house, and sinking $20k into new furniture and remodeling (i.e. we stay put). The kids would prefer this decision. As we own the home free and clear, we are not forced to sell.
See other blogs posts from this series (selling a house in a rotten economy).
If you use Google Analytics, you may occasionally wonder ... wouldn't it be nice to track separate sections of my web site (i.e. folders) as if they were their own independent web domains? While it is possible to code your web site with multiple unique Google ID's, if you wanted to uniquely track eight different folders you would be required to create eight Google ID's, and install that custom code on your web site (i.e. on each page you want to track). If you ever changed your mind due to the need for different analytics desires, you would need to recode with new ID's. Sounds messy, doesn't it?
Enter profile copy and paste. This is NOT a feature found via the normal Google Analytics dashboard. A few minor setup steps are required:
Having installed the script, it's time to use its functionality! Navigate to your Google Analytics dashboard. The process could not be simpler: (images are given below ... click upon any image to maximize)
After reviewing these images, you'll find some instructions later on in this post about constructing optimal Google filters. My examples show I set up an "Include Filter" for my Legos and Nordic Skiiing categories of this blog. Here is a brief explanation of what the ROI script performs:
Step #1
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Step #2
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More on Google Filters
If you don't create some unique filters, your new profile is just a duplicate with exactly the same data. Here is the code I used to create my folder filters:
It's worth learning the Google Filter operators. Here is a Google Forum conversation on tracking multiple folders. In my own case, the expression is interpreted in this manner: Only record analytics data for the root domain folders, nordic-skiing OR legos.
