The overview page contains the following:

• A pie chart showing where your traffic comes from. There are three possible sources:
  • Direct Traffic is when a visitor types your website address directly into the address bar.
  • Referring Sites occur when a site links to yours and shows how much traffic your site is receiving from links on other sites.
  • Search Engine shows what percentage of your traffic is coming from search engines, such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo.
• Top Traffic Sources shows exactly where your traffic is coming from, whether it be direct, referring sites, or through a search engine. It will also say what websites are linking to you and the keywords that people used to find your website on search engines.

Traffic Sources Overview

Google Analytics filters this information even further, giving you more information about each of these sources.

• Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, Search Engines, and All Traffic Sources all give you more information on how people coming from each of these sources interact with your site, such as average time on the website from each, bounce rate, and more.
• AdWords is exceptionally useful if you run an AdWords campaign on Google. It tells you how much traffic you are getting from your Ads, how long they spend on your site, and the bounce rate all of which helps you target and refine your campaign.
• Keywords gives you more info on what terms people are using to find your website on search engines and how they spend time on your site.
• Campaigns shows very specific info about your ad campaigns individually, you can track separate campaigns, see their convergence rates, and more.
• Ad Versions allows you to compare different versions of ads to see which ones are more effective. By doing this you can find which ads give you the most traffic, convince the user to stay longest on the site, and find which have the lowest bounce rates in order to tailor your ad campaign.

All Traffic Sources