I think I may need to join GAA (Google Analytics Anonymous).

Since we launched Total Car Score back on February 17th I've been spending an increasing amount of time staring at the various charts, graphs, maps and statistics available via the Google Analytics interface. It has seriously started to impact my productivity (unless I can justify looking at Google Analytics as a productive use of my time, which I'm clearly trying to do by using it as a blog topic).

For Google Analytics veterans it's probably comical to see someone like me just now discovering it's power. I'm sure (like most modern computer programs) I'm barely scraping the surface of what it can do. But for now I'm happy just seeing how many people in California versus New York visited Total Car Score so far today. Or how many pages the average person visits, or which search terms and social networks are driving the most traffic.

And as each day passes there's that much more data to wade through. For instance, the traffic coming in through organic search (people typing a term in Google or Bing or Yahoo and then clicking on a Total Car Score link) has been on a steady climb. That's pretty much inevitable given the site's newness and it's ability to increasingly rank well in the Google search results compared to not existing before. But even with the inevitable growth in this area I find it hugely gratifying to see how many more people discover Total Car Score everyday through simply using a search engine. These aren't people being pulled in by paid search (though we've got that element, too), and they aren't being directed here by advertisements or mentions in news stories (yes, we've got those elements in play as well). No, these are people that have no idea Total Car Score exists until they type in something like "2013 Ford Mustang Road Test" and see it on the first page of the search results.

That's cool. And it's the essence of "free advertising" (other than the cost of producing the road test...and setting up the entire site...).

Regardless, if you're a data geek and you don't have a reason to look at Google Analytics, trust me, you're missing out.