I love Google Analytics… it gives me the information I need, it easy to navigate and find what I want, has powerful filters to allow me to find the info I need, and it is free.

I know that there is more information that I could be gathering from Analytics, but how can I balance my desire for more and more information and data with the knowledge that I could be wasting a lot of time in Analytics while lying to myself and telling myself that I am actually working.

SEOMoz has a great breakdown of 7 Google Analytics Custom Intelligence Alerts that are great for marketers.  Some of them are about tracking goals, which I do not use, but the others are simply good alerts to notify you via e-mail when you have large traffic spikes, dips in traffic, dips in search engine traffic, and when Analytics has flatlined  (usually always happened to me when I switched my theme and the Analaytics was hard coded into the theme… it could also tell you if your site is having any server errors or anything.)

To set them up is easy.. . you simply click the “Grab it” link underneath the article, and you’ll be taken to Google Analytics, and all you need to do is choose which site profiles you want to add these alerts to!

Now, I don’t need to comb through my Analytics for all of my sites, to look for such spikes and drops… I can be notified by e-mail and look at the important ones.