Have you been formally introduced to the world of web site analytics?  Even with a FREE tool like Google Analytics, you can glean tremendous insight into who visits your web site.  Just a few metrics that Google Analytics provides include:

• Where visitors who come to your web site are located
• How long visitors spend on your web site
• How many pages visitors who visit your web site view
• The average amount of time spent viewing a particular page
• What page visitors exit your site from
• How visitors arrived at your site (a search on a search engine, a link on another site, a pay-per-click ad)

And there's so much more.

What is great is that you can look at the data in many different ways (How long do people who arrive at my site by searching on a search engine for 'Miami Real Estate' stay on my site?  What is the average amount of time spent on my site for users who arrived by way of a pay-per-click ad vs. a link on another web site).  And on... And on... 

Access to good analytics is a great help in understanding your audience and how they use your site.

What about ActiveRain?  What about Localism?  I'm new here, but I was a bit surprised at how limited the reporting mechanisms are.  Now, I'm not complaining.  ActiveRain is GREAT!  But, everything can be better!  If we could provide our Google Tracking Code as a part of our ActiveRain profile, and ActiveRain placed it on all of our ActiveRain and Localism pages, we could know everything mentioned above and more!

Beyond what is above, how great it would be to know

• How many views of an article were on Localism and how many were on ActiveRain?
• Which of my blog posts yielded the most views of my profile?  The most clicks on the "Contact Me" button?
• What are visitors to my ActiveRain and Localism pages typing to find me on search engines?

There is so much we could know to help us market ourselves (and ActiveRain and Localism at the same time) if ActiveRain could integrate simple Google Analytics (or another analytics package).

What do you think!?