Using Google Analytics on your website to show the metrics of how your site is being used has become the standard and is to be encouraged. The basic service does more than enough for non-commercial use and is free of charge. There is a useful adjunct service 'Google Search Console' (was Google Webmaster Tools) that allows you insight into how your website is interacting with Google search, and gives you some ways of interceding.
To add Google analytics to your site you will need a Google account and to set up a Google analytics account for the site in question - full up to date information about how to do this is on the Google Analytics help site. The Falcon help site details how to add the tracking code to a Falcon site.
To start an account on the Google Search console, follow the directions on the Google support site. Please note that you will need to give other people access to the search console separately from the access you give to the analytics account. There are various ways you can manage your site through the search console, particularly you can seed URLs into Google by submitting a sitemap (see Falcon help site for how to do this), you can remove from Google pages that have been made public by mistake, and you can find out how keywords have been used in Google to find your site.
Moves by Google to promote https view
In their Chrome browser Google (and other browser creators) have been moving towards promoting use of the https protocol over http. Starting in October 2017 Chrome (version 62) will show a “NOT SECURE” warning when users enter text in a form on an HTTP page, and for all HTTP pages in Incognito mode. It is likely that Google Search will use the presence of this flag to reduce the relevance of search results that display it, so it is sensible to do what you can to emphasise the use of https before the end of October.
Many websites have moved from http to https or embrace both, usually with a redirect from http to https. If your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts were set up some time ago you ought to revisit both to the establish the https URL as your default view. See 'Modifying your Google accounts to move to https' for the details of how to do this.
Further help
If you need more information or assistance, please email web-group@uis.cam.ac.uk.
01223 332999