It’s late, and I’m about to call in a night.    Been thinking about Web Analytics Tracking all afternoon and evening; talking with Maisha Walker earlier today, in preparation for the panel I’m part of next week on Ultra Light Web Analytics got me wondering just what would a Ultra Light Startup want to track, and how would they?

	Ultra Light Startups™
	Tech entrepreneurs, sharing techniques to launch faster and cheaper
February 2009 Entrepreneurs Forum: Ultra Light Web Analytics

Usually, I’ll drawn on my analytics approach when I have a question that drives me  (otherwise, I wouldn’t).

When  working on a real life problem, using real data, insights come to me of what needs to happen next.

After talking with Maisha Walker we agreed I’d come up with a list of all the things you could track using Web Analytics and what would each type of business want to track.  I searched around to see who has written about Web Analytics from this perspective (what to track depending on what your business and goals are) and did not find much.

I’m rising to the occasion.

I suggested we turn it around and have the Ultra Light Startup describe their business model and goals, from which the panel (including me) would suggest what they should be tracking and how – based on the goals of their business.

Brainstorming,  I started making up a list of what to track and threw it into PowerPoint (which implies, how to track), matching it up with the type and complexity of the business you have – found it’s not that easy.

What do you think ought to be tracked if yours is a small startup – its visitation and pathing enough?

On a tagental but related thought Steve Rubel is wondering if Google Cookie Tracking Everyone’s Surfing Habits?

“…they are now tracking every site you visit via a Google cookie and serving the aggregate data up to advertisers. If I am wrong I hope someone will tell me. (If this post is wrong I will correct it – but this is how I am interpreting what Google has put out there so far.)

Let’s take a look at the facts.

First, Google yesterday made some subtle changes to its privacy policy. Coincidence? Maybe.

Second, according to the Google Adwords blog, the search engine has now added a new site traffic metric in Ad Planner called Unique Visitors (cookies). This, according to Google is a new cookie-based metric that “help(s) you cross check and compare metrics, similar to Google Analytics unique visitor metrics.”