Accessing Engineering's Web Analytics System (Urchin)

Urchin Web Analytics No Longer Supported

This document has been archived because ECN no longer supports Urchin Web Analytics.  Please email webmaster@ecn.purdue.edu for information on using Google Analytics or Siteimprove Analytics tools.

What is Urchin?

Urchin Software from Google analyzes traffic for one or more websites and provides easy-to-understand reports on your visitors - where they come from, how they use your site, what converts them into customers, and much more.

Accessing Urchin

Browse to the URL below to automatically login to the Purdue Engineering Urchin system:

https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/WebStats

A screen will load with a list of reports available in Urchin. Use the "Next" link at the bottom of the page to page through all of the available sites. Once you find the appropriate site click on the site's name (e.g. College of Engineering). If the site you are looking for does not appear in the list you can request that it be added by e-mailing webmaster@ecn.purdue.edu

Once a site is selected, the reports for that site will load.

Specifying a Date Range

All reports within Urchin are tied to a date range. The default date range is the past week. If you would like a broader look at trends within your site you can modify the date range using the "Date Range" box in the left sidebar.

Browsing Reports

The available reports are categorized into three sections in the left sidebar: Marketing Optimization, Content Optimization, and IT Reports. Click on a section to view sub-sections. Click on a sub-section to view individual reports. Once a report is selected it will load in the right panel.

A description of each report is available below the report in a box titled, "Help Information"

Content Drilldown

One particularly useful report is titled, "Content Drilldown". This report allows you to browse through your directory structure to see what content is being accesses the most at each level. This is useful if you would like to get an idea of the traffic to a specific section of your site.

To access the content drilldown report expand the "Content Optimization" section and the "Content Performance" sub-section, then click on "Content Drilldown". A graph and a list of folders will appear in the right. Clicking on a folder will reload the report but showing the items within that folder. You can continue this process to locate a specific sub-site.

For example, from the "Intranet" site I can use content drilldown to find information about a specific administrative office by clicking Intranet > Groups > Administration. The resulting list shows the folders and files accessed within the Administration section of the Intranet.