What should an owner look at in Google Analytics, and what can you ignore?
Once a month, look at four things: how many sessions the site had compared with earlier months, which channels they came from, which pages people landed on, and, if the site counts them, how many inquiries each channel and page produced. Google describes a session as a period of time during which a user interacts with your site. Most other reports, and day-to-day swings, can usually be left alone.
What a session is
Google's help page says a session starts when someone views a page and no session is already active, and that by default it ends after 30 minutes of inactivity, with no limit on how long it can last. One person can have several sessions, so sessions are roughly visits, not people.
Google also says session and user counts are calculated through an estimation, and its example shows that numbers that differ slightly can still show the same direction of change. Read them as trends, not exact counts.
The four numbers worth a monthly look
| Look at | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Sessions, this month against last month and the same month last year | Whether attention to the site is rising or falling |
| Sessions by channel | Where that attention comes from; the related answer on organic, paid and referral traffic explains the labels |
| Landing pages | Which pages people arrive on, and so which ones are worth improving first |
| Key events, such as form sends or taps on your phone number | Which channels and pages lead to inquiries, if the site counts them |
About key events
Google defines a key event as an event that measures an action particularly important to the success of your business, and says reports such as Landing pages and User acquisition include a Key events column. For a service business, an inquiry is the obvious one. Google notes that some of the data in its reports needs additional setup, so ask whoever runs the site whether inquiries are counted; if they are not, those columns can be empty or misleading.
What you can usually leave alone
- The Realtime report: watching visitors arrive live tells a service business very little.
- Day-to-day swings, which are often noise on a small site.
- Bounce rate on its own; the related answer on what a bounce rate is explains why.
- Reports on visitors' ages and interests, unless a decision depends on them.
- Any number you would not change something because of.
Read it next to your lead records
Google's channel labels follow its own rules. Its sessions page gives an example: someone who first arrives through a Google organic link and comes back directly 68 days later has that later session attributed to google / organic too, under the default 90-day window. A customer might tell you something different, so ask every inquiry how they found you and follow it to won, lost or still open. The related answer on whether a small business needs website analytics covers what only your lead records can show.
Sources
- Analytics Help (Google), "About Analytics sessions" (accessed 2026-10-24)
- Analytics Help (Google), "About key events" (accessed 2026-10-24)
- Analytics Help (Google), "Overview of Google Analytics reports" (accessed 2026-10-24)
Related answers
- Does a small business need website analytics?
- What do 'organic', 'paid' and 'referral' traffic mean in your website analytics?
- What is a bounce rate, and should a service business worry about it?
Websites, upgraded or built
Most businesses do not need a new website. They need the one they have to load fast, say clearly what they do and ask the visitor to take one step.