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Happy Thanksgiving!

I’ve had quite a few people stop by because of the original post on Google Analytics reports delays, so I thought I’d post a quick update.

My experience is that analytics takes longer than the 12 hours they advertise–about three times as long. But then everything seems to catch up pretty well. It may be that they were completely slammed at launch–I don’t know for sure.

What I also noticed that that the “check status” link will give you a false negative report if you have a long first page. For example, the blog page still shows that Google Analytics hasn’t verified the on page code even though the reports have started coming through.

In summary: be patient. A little more patient, and you should be fine.

Very, very cool. The first report took a couple of days to show up–longer than the advertised 12 hours, but I don’t care. Google Analytics: I love you. And I’m going to recommend you to every single customer, friend and–what the hell–sworn blood enemy I have.

(”Sworn blood enemy?” Sure: Brent from high school. You know who you are!)

(Just kidding. But it makes for more interesting reading, right?)

So far, my favorite part is the “Geo Overlay”. Here are a few of my recent hits.

A couple of things I’d like to see but haven’t seen yet: 1) individual user sessions. I wanna know how people are using the site. 2) a way to exclude my own hits from the stats. I don’t care how often I hit the site.

Nice chatting with you about your websites!

• Butch in LA
• Michael in LA
• Jason in Chicago
• Jerry in Chicago
• Lisa in NJ
• Eleanor in NJ
• Cynthia in Chicago
• Lou in IN

Have a great day!

I was at a business association networking event earlier today talking with people about their sites and their website maintenance service providers. It struck me that providers usually fall into one of two camps.

The first camp is the geeks. I mean GEEK in the best possible way–into code, into the technology behind the website. People who can tell you what a structure adaptive anisotropic image filter is. Yes, that link goes to my blog. Yes, I’m a geek.

So the first type of website maintenance providers are the geeks–and that’s where they stop.

The second camp, which I think is more interesting still, is the geeks who are also geeked about business. That is to say, the geeks who understand that the technology they’re so enamored with has to serve and fulfill real world business goals. Increase sales. Improve customer service. Get your team on the same page.

You need to find a website maintenance provider of the second type. You’ll know within a few minutes of talking to them whether or not their what you need. They’ll be talking about your business goals and ways your website can better serve them. They’ll probably veer off into the latest Web 2.0 geek meme for a minute, but they’ll always circle back.

I’m a business geek. Call me and tell me about your business goals. I want to know. That’s what I love about this job!