2024 Google Analytics year in review

Commonly tracked Google Analytics metrics:

The Avg. engagement time is the average length of time that the website had focus in the browser. It's up significantly from the previous year which is generally considered a good sign.

Report description: Preference of our visitors based on their web browser setting.

Below, you can see the 10 most popular languages. Among active users, English was preferred by 80% of our visitors; French was preferred by 14% of our visitors.

Report description: Where are our visitors come from.

Below, you can see the 10 most common countries. It's no surprise that visitors from the United States ranked in second place. From the full report, it appears our visitors came from 234 countries in total – with Greenland (ranking 216) listed separately from Denmark!

Report description: The number of active users coming to the site by device category, i.e., by desktop, tablet or mobile.

For 2024, the traffic from desktop computers (50.3%) is slightly higher than the traffic from mobile devices (48.1%). Together, they form the bulk of users visiting our site. A little over 1.4% of our traffic comes from tablets and we started seeing traffic from smart TVs (0.004%)! So, the numbers are practically the same as last year.

Data from previous years:

In 2023, it was: desktop at 50.5%; mobile at 48%; tablet at 1.5%.
In 2022, it was: desktop at 53%; mobile at 45%; tablet at 1.5%.
In 2021, it was: mobile at 52%; desktop at 46%; tablet at 2%.
In 2020, it was: mobile at 54%; desktop at 43%; tablet at 3%.

Report description: High-level categories that show how people find our site.

We use the following definitions to determine this:

• Organic Search is free traffic from search engines like google.com, bing.com, etc.
• Direct is traffic coming to our website without a referral through a user's web browser, e.g., by typing the URL in the browser address bar or using a bookmark.
• Display indicates traffic coming from ads that are run on other websites, e.g., banner ads on blogs, image ads on news sites.
• Social is traffic coming from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. (There is now a distinction between Organic Social and Paid Social.)
• Organic Video refers to traffic from non-ad links on video sites like YouTube, TikTok, or Vimeo. 
• Referral indicates traffic where users clicked a link from another site (excluding the major search engines). 
• Email is traffic from links clicked in email messages, either mass email or individual messages. 
• Paid Search is traffic coming from Google Ads, etc. 
• Unassigned refers to traffic from sources not recognized within Google's predefined channel rules. 

At 71% organic search is, by far, the most popular way people find our website.

Report description: The pages of our website with the most traffic.

The best performing pages for 2024 included the:

• Concordia homepage (/)
• Several pages related to the Student hub, such as:
  • My CU account
  • Undergraduate Student hub landing page
  • Course schedule
  • Moodle
• Carrefour (including MY CU Account)
• The search page
• The undergraduate program list page

The only surprise is that several years after MyConcordia's decommissioning, employees are still visiting that page!

Report description: The page where people first arrive at our site.

The report suggests that students are bookmarking important pages like My CU Account, Moodle and the Academic dates (at the undergraduate level). It also suggests that a lot of users had seen the decommissioning notice for MyConcordia Portal.

Report description: Key terms that a significant number of people have used to get to our site from Google.

Below are the top 25 search terms for 2024. This report provides fast insight into what our audience is looking for and can help you identify the key terms to include in your web pages.

  1 – concordia university
  2 – concordia
  3 – moodle concordia
  4 – concordia student center
  5 – concordia student hub
  6 – student center concordia
  7 – student hub concordia
  8 – student hub
  9 – concordia moodle
10 – concordia academic calendar
11 – concordia calendar
12 – concordia jobs
13 – université concordia
14 – concordia bookstore
15 – concordia university montreal
16 – my cu account
17 – concordia email
18 – udemy concordia
19 – dprint concordia
20 – concordia programs
21 – concordia login
22 – john molson school of business
23 – student centre concordia
24 – concordia grading scale
25 – concordia university canada

Although analytics change slowly from year to year, staying abreast of these subtle changes is both interesting and important.

Official resources from Google:
Google Analytics Academy
Google Analytics – YouTube Channel
Google Analytics products – Official blog