Google Analytics: One Terrifying Little Dot


Google Analytics: One Terrifying Little Dot

I’m in Google Analytics fairly often. I’m no statistician, but I like to think that I know my way around a graph.

So one morning as my coffee is brewing I’m looking over my stats when I’m presented with a single dot. One little confusing, inexplicable, terrifying little dot.

I swear to you I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out if my site was down, if my computer was on the fritz, if all civilization had crumbled overnight…

And then I noticed that I’d mistakenly set the dates for one day instead of one month as I’d intended. I breathed a sigh of relief, climbed upstairs for some coffee, and, when my heart rate had returned to normal, jotted down the above cartoon.

Note to readers: coffee first, then Analytics.

9 Comments ▼

Mark Anderson Mark Anderson's cartoons appear in publications including Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review. His business cartoons are available for licensing at his website, Andertoons.com.

9 Reactions
  1. Andy @ FirstFound

    Brilliant!

    I’ve done that on Analytics before now and you’re right. Coffee helps.

  2. Hahaha. It’s great when the problem is so obvious, yet we try to make it so much more complex.

  3. GA is great. Still has some weird bugs that you have to take w/a grain of salt, but still, easy to use to measure your site’s performance.

  4. Haha. I’ve just put GA back on my website, I had a big absence for a while, not really too sure why, and I’m trying to get to grip with it all. I do love looking at the graphs though, I might go have to make some graphs on random topics now ha.

  5. LOL I’ll pass the tip along. Love it. Thanks for sharing, Mark!

  6. Tynnisha Hamilton

    Haha I’ll remember that tip. Next time I log in to Analytics, I’ll ask myself, “Have I had my coffee today?”.

  7. Sounds like there’s a silver lining in your learning curve. I enjoyed the cartoon.

    Thanks,
    James

  8. Mark,

    I stick to tea instead! 😉

    Have you found the “inbox related cartoon” I asked about? 🙂

  9. Tynnisha Hamilton,

    I am having a cup of tea right now. I use Google Analytics too, but if I want to have traffic stats in a very easy way, I click on the SiteMeter button on my EGO blog. It is open to the public.