Google Data » Alden DeSoto

Updating the Analytics IQ Course and Exam

Alden DeSoto — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:54:00 +0000

Today, we updated the Google Analytics IQ course, available at google.com/analytics/iq, to reflect the new version of Google Analytics. An updated exam will appear during the first week of January. If you’re already in the middle of studying and plan to take the exam in December, you may wish to continue using the old version of the course, which will remain available at ConversionUniversity.com for one more week. After that, ConversionUniversity.com will host the new course.

So, what’s been updated? If you’ve been practicing with the old version of Google Analytics, you’ll find that most of the knowledge you’ve acquired will be valid and useful for the new exam. But, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the new version and start using it.

Specifically, you should

understand accounts, web properties, and profiles in the new Google Analytics,
know the goal types and when to use each type,
understand the concepts of “metric” and “dimension”,
be aware of new Google Analytics capabilities and reports. (Try reviewing recent posts on this blog to make sure you’re up to speed.)

We hope you enjoy the updated online course and best of luck on the exam!

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Back-to-Basics: Non-Brand Keywords

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 16:51:00 +0000

The majority of search referrals to the Google Store come from brand related searches -- searches that include brand references like “google store”, “android t-shirt”, or “youtube jacket”. But, as I dug into the data, I was surprised to find that googlestore.com gets many non-brand related search referrals as well.

Take a look at the non-brand searches that send traffic to your own site -- I think you’ll find the data interesting. By isolating non-brand keywords, you take brand recognition out of the equation and focus on the products that people look for -- and click over to find on your site.

Here’s a quick way to see your non-brand keyword traffic. Under Traffic Sources, go to the Keywords report. Then, in the Filter Keyword box at the bottom of the table, select Excluding, and type in your brand name.

If you have multiple brands, type them all in separated by the | sign. Here’s how this looks for googlestore.com:

google|android|youtube|content

You’ll notice that I also excluded the word “content”. This is because the report includes “content targeting” and I don’t want to include content targeting referrals.

Click Go to see the filtered keywords. If there’s anything else you’ve missed, just add it to your exclude list and click Go again. Here are the results for the Google Store.

That’s all there is to it. Try it on your own data and leave us a comment letting us know what you find!

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Back To Basics: Part 3 – The Power of Exclusion

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 17:29:00 +0000

In Part 2, we saw that a store owner gained an unexpected lift in search traffic to his website after running a promotion on a referring site. The questions we left until this week to answer are these: How many extra searches resulted from the promotion? And, what keywords did people search on?

To answer these questions, we need to compare what usually happens versus what actually happened after the promotion. A good way to do this is to use the Compare to Past feature on the date range selector. If we compare the previous week with the promotion week, we can see how much of a lift there was after the promotion.

Notice that we use the exact same days, Monday through Sunday, so that the days of the week line up. Here is the resulting graph. The green line is the search traffic leading up to the promotion (what he would ordinarily expect without a promotion); the blue line is the search traffic during and after the promotion.

From the report below, you can see the specific increase for each keyword.

The promotion resulted in a 209.68% increase in searches on the first keyword and an increase of 1,242.86% in searches on the second keyword. That’s good to know. It looks like one day promotions are the way to go for this business.

This is good example of how to use Compare to Past. You might also want to check out this tip on how to line up your date ranges when using Compare to Past.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Back To Basics: The Power of Exclusion (Part 2)

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:18:00 +0000

Last week, we saw how a website owner removed traffic from his latest promotion to study the effects of that promotion on his data. The blue line represents all visits over a 2-week period. The spike in the middle is due to a 50%-off referral-based promotion.

The yellow line is where it gets interesting. This line represents all traffic except traffic from the promotional site. Since the yellow line excludes the promotional referrals, why does it show a spike in traffic?

To find out, the store owner de-selected the All Visits segment so that only the Exclude Promo Site segment was active.

Then, he looked at each of the reports in the Traffic Sources section -- the Direct Traffic report , Referring Sites report, and Search Engines report-- to find out where the non-promo traffic spike was coming from. Here’s the graph he saw when he looked at the Search Engines report.

It turns out the extra traffic was coming from search. Happily, the referral site promotion had been even more successful than expected. Because not only was there a big spike in traffic due to the referral, there was also a spike from search. As a result of the increased exposure, more people were searching for his store.

With that mystery solved, we’re ready for the next step. How can we find out how many extra searches resulted from the promotion? And, exactly which keywords were people searching on? We’ll take a look in Part 3, next week.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Back-To-Basics: The Power of Exclusion

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:49:00 +0000

I have a friend who owns a store in my neighborhood. He decided to run a 50%-off special on a site that specializes in one-day promotions to its members. His goal was to get wider exposure for his store and gain some new customers. If you look at the graph, you can see that the day that the promotion ran, traffic to his site spiked. Traffic then dropped off to normal the next day, but this was expected given the nature of this particular campaign.

The store owner was happy to see the spike in traffic, but he wanted to learn more. So he did something clever and created an advanced segment. But instead of creating an advanced segment for traffic from just the promotional site, he did the exact opposite. He created a segment that excluded all the promotional traffic.

Why? It’s a great example of what I call the power of exclusion. More about that in a minute, but first let’s look at how you would create a segment that excludes traffic from a specific site.

First, click the Advanced Segments drop down and click “Create a new advanced segment”.

From the menu on the left, drag Source into the working area. Select the condition “Does not contain”. Enter the name of the site from which you want to exclude traffic, for example “example.com”. Then name and save the segment.

To apply the segment, click the Advanced Segments drop down again and select your newly created segment. (You’ll see it under Custom Segments.) In this case, I named this segment “exclude promo site”.

Take a look at the graph below and you’ll see why this was a smart idea. The blue line is all traffic. The orange line is all traffic except traffic from the promotional site. Notice something interesting? That’s right. The orange line also shows a spike, even though it doesn’t include any referrals from the promo site.

This is the power of exclusion: If you want to find out how effective something is -- whether it’s a traffic source, a promo, or a campaign -- try excluding its influence from your data. You might be surprised at what you find.

So, why is there a traffic spike in the “exclude promo site” segment? Tune in next week and find out. In the meantime, watch this short video tutorial to re-acquaint yourself with advanced segments.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Back-To-Basics: How much mobile traffic do you get? (Part 2)

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:21:00 +0000

Last week’s back-to-basics post illustrated the dramatic growth in mobile with an example from googlestore.com. This week, let’s look at how to create a mobile trend graph from your own data.

You’ll start by creating an advanced segment. Go to your reports in Google Analytics. In the left navigation, you’ll see a grey box called My Customizations. In this box, click Advanced Segments. On the next screen, click “Create new custom segment”. This will take you to the segment builder screen.

Under Dimensions (in green), expand Systems and drag “Operating System” into the work area and create this definition:

Operating System Matches Exactly Android

Now, add an OR condition and add another definition:

Operating System Matches Exactly iPhone

Keep adding as many OR conditions and definitions as you like.

Name the segment (for example, “mobile phones”) and save it. You can now use the Advanced Segments dropdown (at top right of most reports) to apply the segment. For last week’s graph, I selected only “mobile phones” and de-selected “All Visits”. This allowed me to only see traffic from the mobile phone types in my segment.

Now, to see your trend graph, go to any report that graphs visits (for example, the Dashboard will work fine for this). Set your date range to include the last 18 months or 2 years. The trend will be most clear if you select the Graph by Month icon (at top right of the graph):

How much growth are you seeing over the past year or more? Post a comment and let us know what you’ve found!

Also, if you’re rusty with advanced segments, be sure to watch this short video tutorial.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Back-to-Basics: How much mobile traffic do you get?

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:36:00 +0000

More and more people are surfing the Internet from their phones these days. Take a look at the following graph. It shows the number of monthly visits to googlestore.com from Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry devices over the past 2 years. There were 277 visits in Sep, 2008. But in July of 2010, there were over 13,000 visits!

Given this kind of growth, it makes sense for many businesses to set up a mobile device-friendly site. If you’ve been considering whether to create a mobile site, you may want to check out the Mobile Devices report in the Visitors section. You can see how many visits you received from each mobile operating system, how many pages they visit on average, how much time they spend on your site, as well as see conversion and ecommerce information.

In next week’s Back to Basics, I’ll show you how to create your own trend graph like the one in this article, so you can really dig into the numbers for your own site.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Back to Basics: Fast Segments with Analytics Intelligence

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:30:00 +0000

Did you know that there’s a quick way to create advanced segments from automatic alerts? This is one of those “I can’t believe how powerful this is and yet so easy to do” features. Let me illustrate with an example from the Google Store site. A few months ago, on February 5, the Google Store received a surge of traffic from TechCrunch.com. We would not have noticed this extra traffic were it not for Analytics Intelligence. In the following screenshot, you can see that the store ordinarily receives between 0 and 221 visits from TechCrunch, but on this day, it received 1,918 visits.

What happened was that TechCrunch ran an article about Google scarves that were being sold in the store. But, here’s the tip I want to share with you. First, you can graph just the

relevant traffic simply by clicking the button on the alert.

And, you can create an advanced segment just by clicking the Create Segment link at the far right of the alert.

Now you can compare this traffic side by side with overall site traffic or with traffic from other segments. Check out this video to see how this works and to learn more automatic alert tips.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Back to Basics: Filtering Keywords

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:53:00 +0000

If you’ve ever wondered how to make sense of the long lists of keywords that appear in your reports, this week’s tip is for you. Look at the bottom of most tables in Google Analytics and you’ll see an Advanced Filter option. With this option, you can filter the data in your table according to almost any set of conditions you wish.

Let’s say you’re only interested in keywords that brought in visitors who spent at least 2 minutes on your site.

When you enter the condition for Avg Time on Site, you’ll need to use seconds. So, here, we’ve entered 120 seconds (=2 minutes).

Or, perhaps you only want the keywords with a bounce rate of less than 30%. (Make sure you use .3 for 30%. So, for example, .05 is 5%, .25 is 25%, and 1 is 100%.)

You can even enter multiple conditions. In this case, we want to weed out all the low traffic keywords as well.

Advanced Filters are a great way to focus on your most important keywords. To see this example in action, watch this short video.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Back to Basics: Keyword/Landing Page Combinations

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:16:00 +0000

Starting today, we’re reinstating the Back To Basics series. Each Wednesday, we’ll share a Google Analytics tip, usually something that you can try right away with your own data to gain new insights. This week, we’ll illustrate a quick way to see how many visits you get from different keyword/landing page combinations.

A friend of mine recently created several new landing pages that she hoped would attract traffic. She wanted to see at a glance whether people who searched on her top keywords were seeing the new pages. While she knew that she could use the Top Landing Pages report to analyze each individual landing page, she wanted to see keyword/landing page combinations in a single report.

There’s an easy way to do this. Go to the Keywords report under Traffic Sources. Look over to the right above the table and you’ll see Views: followed by a set of buttons. Click the Pivot view (5th button from the left). Now, look to the left, above the table, and you’ll see a Pivot by dropdown menu. Select Landing Page from this menu.

Voilà! The keywords will be listed down the side and landing pages will be listed across the top. You can now see how many visits you received for each keyword/landing page combination.

You can see up to five landing pages listed across the top of the report. You can scroll horizontally (across the landing pages) using the arrow buttons at the top right of the table.

The pivot view is also really useful for seeing at a glance how many visits you get from each keyword and search engine combination. To do this, you’d use the same Keywords report and pivot by Source.

That’s this week’s tip. We’ll be back next Wednesday for another Back to Basics post.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Like Web Analytics? Check Out The Beyond Web Analytics Podcast

Alden DeSoto — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:20:00 +0000

Do you like Web Analytics? Do you want to stay up to date on the latest developments in the industry? Recently, a few Web Analytics "geeks" decided to start an audio podcast to interview key people/vendors in the Web Analytics space. The podcast also covers topics related to Web Analytics such as Mobile Measurement, Social Media Tracking, Engagement, etc. With over 20 episodes and 20,000 downloads so far, the podcast has been well received and we'd like to help spread the word. In the most recent installment, you can hear Google's own Phil Mui so click here to listen to that podcast.

You can subscribe to the podcast via RSS at www.beyondwebanalytics.com or you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. You can also follow the podcast on Twitter. Enjoy!

Posted by Adam Greco, Beyond Web Analytics

Greater choice and transparency for Google Analytics

Alden DeSoto — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:38:00 +0000

Many website owners use Google Analytics and other web analytics tools to make business-critical decisions about how to improve their websites by understanding how users engage with their webpages. We’ve worked hard to make Google Analytics both a robust and reliable web analytics platform while also ensuring the trust and privacy of visitors of these websites. Today we’re taking additional steps to provide even more choice and transparency for both website owners and users.

First, we’re announcing the availability of the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The opt-out provides users with a choice of whether information about website visits is collected by Google Analytics. The add-on stops data from being sent from your computer when you visit websites that use Google Analytics Javascript (ga.js) to track usage. The beta version of the opt-out that we are releasing today is available for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome, and can be downloaded here: tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Additionally, we’re also releasing new functionality for website owners to provide an additional level of privacy for visitors to their sites by offering an option to anonymize IP address information sent to Google. Google Analytics uses the IP address of website visitors to provide general geographic reporting. Website owners can now choose to have Google Analytics store and use only a portion of this IP address for geographic reports. Keep in mind, that using this functionality will somewhat reduce the accuracy of geographic data in your Analytics reports. You can learn how to implement this within your existing Google Analytics installation here: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gaJS/gaJSApi_gat.html

We’re committed to Google Analytics as an industry-leading web analytics platform that also provides users with transparency and choice when it comes to privacy.

Posted by Amy Chang, Director of Product Management, Google Analytics

It’s now easy to set up new sites with Asynchronous Tracking

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:21:00 +0000

We’re happy to announce that the asynchronous tracking tag, which came out of beta last week, is now available in your admin interface when you set up a new profile. This makes it easy for everyone to start off tracking new sites with this very fast, state-of-the-art tag.

Whether you’re tracking a single domain, or a more complex site with multiple subdomains or top level domains, there’s an option in the interface to give you exactly the code you need.

Simply select the scenario that fits your needs. The admin interface now provides the asynchronous tracking code by default, but if you need the traditional tracking snippet you can find it here.

We also encourage you to upgrade your existing sites to the new tag. To help you, we’ve created complete instructions and migration examples.

Enjoy your new, faster site!

Posted by Jesse Savage, Google Analytics Team

New AdWords ID Data in Google Analytics API

Alden DeSoto — Thu, 06 May 2010 19:56:00 +0000

Google Analytics helps marketers measure the performance of their ad campaigns. By linking Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, advertisers get a detailed picture of the performance of their ad creatives and keywords. Manually optimizing campaigns works well for the top 100 or 1000 keywords, but can be a challenge for the 1000+ keywords in the long tail.

To help advertisers, we are releasing 5 new dimensions through the Google Analytics API that correlate to the AdWords API IDs.

ga:adwordsCustomerID
ga:adwordsCampaignID
ga:adwordsAdGroupID
ga:adwordsCriteriaID
ga:adwordsCreativeID

This allows advertisers to gain new insight by by combining data from Google Analytics and Google AdWords data sets.

Likewise, clients can increase their efficiency by automating reporting using applications. For example, a developer could write an application that ranks all the ad and keyword combinations by bounce rate for the top 50 landing pages, making it easy to identify which ad creatives could be optimized. Running such a report at night would allow an analyst to spend their day focused on optimizing ad creatives to yield real outcomes.

To help you get started quickly, we wrote an article that walks through the steps of joining data from both sources. We also provided the sample application that produces the table above. Here's a sample Java code snippet that shows exactly how to insert the IDs from Google Analytics into a Google AdWords API filter:


  public AdGroupCriterionIdFilter[] getCriterionFilters(DataFeed
     analyticsData) {

   int numFilters = analyticsData.getEntries().size();
   AdGroupCriterionIdFilter[] critFilters = new
       AdGroupCriterionIdFilter[numFilters];

   for (int i = 0; i < numFilters; i++) {

     DataEntry entry = analyticsData.getEntries().get(i);
     Long groupID =     
        Long.parseLong(entry.stringValueOf("ga:adwordsAdGroupID"));
     Long critID =  
        Long.parseLong(entry.stringValueOf("ga:adwordsCriteriaID"));

     AdGroupCriterionIdFilter critFilter = new AdGroupCriterionIdFilter();
     critFilter.setAdGroupId(groupID);
     critFilter.setCriterionId(critID);
     critFilters[i] = critFilter;
   }
   return critFilters;
 }

Please keep in mind that all applications that combine data with the AdWords API must follow the AdWords API terms of service.

We're really excited about the new possibilities this data allows. We look forward to hearing how you use it to improve your ad campaigns!

Thanks!

Posted by Alex Lucas, Google Analytics API Team

Google Analytics releases 38 features…

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 05 May 2010 20:57:00 +0000

It’s only been a year since we launched the Google Analytics Data Export API and developer programs. To celebrate we are highlighting some of the exciting solutions that extend Google Analytics in our new Google Analytics Application Gallery!

Here are just a few of the exciting applications in the gallery:

Analytics HD

AnalyticsApp is an app for Google Analytics on the iPad!

Analytics Visualizations

The Referrer Flow visualization shows you what sites link to you and which content works best. The Keyword visualization displays the most frequently used search keywords and how they are used together.

BTBuckets

BTBuckets is a free segmentation and optimization webapp that allows sites to create user segments and take actions upon them in real time.

Ca llTrackID

CallTrackID allows telephone enquiries to be tracked from various traffic routes, including direct, organic, PPC ad, affiliate and offline straight into Google Analytics.

S hufflePoint Studio for PowerPoint

ShufflePoint Studio allows you to associate PowerPoint text, table, and chart placeholders with refreshable Google Analytics data.

The App Gallery makes it easy for customers to find 3rd party solutions that extend Google Analytics in new and useful ways. We also think it’s a great way for developers to find new users and attract more customers. If you’re a developer and you’d like to have your application listed in the gallery, we've created a simple submission form to get your app added.

Finally, if you’re interested in learning more about how you can integrate with Google Analytics, join us for our presentation: Google Analytics: End-to-End on May 20th at Google IO.

Thanks!

Posted by Nick Mihailovksi, Google Analytics API Team

The Growing Google Analytics Ecosystem

Alden DeSoto — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:48:00 +0000

Google Analytics is not simply a product but also a growing ecosystem of developers, tools, users, and partners. Today at the eMetrics Summit in San Jose, Brett Crosby made several announcements that highlight this ecosystem.

All Google Analytics customers have access to a worldwide network of Google Certified Partners (formerly known as Google Analytics Authorized Consultants). And now the ecosystem is growing further with developers who are creating a variety of applications on the Google Analytics platform. Today, we’re announcing the Google Analytics App Gallery. Among the current list of 32 apps, you’ll find tools like Excellent Analytics, which lets you work with your Analytics data in an Excel spreadsheet, and the Analyticator for Wordpress, which automatically implements Google Analytics across your entire WordPress site. There are many more applications in the gallery, so go take a look. And if you’re a developer, you can learn how to publish apps in the App Gallery here.

Google AdWords is another important part of the ecosystem. Website owners drive traffic using AdWords, and use Google Analytics to understand the performance of that traffic. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be making a new set of AdWords reports available in Google Analytics. These reports expand significantly on the AdWords reports you currently see in your account. For example, you can break out your AdWords traffic by actual search query, match type, distribution network, and many other AdWords attributes. We’ve added reports for day parting, placements, and destination URLs. For a 3-minute overview of what you can accomplish with the new reports, check out this video.

Also, developers can now access AdWords information via the Google Analytics APIs. This makes it much easier to combine your AdWords and Google Analytics data for both analysis and automation. We’re very excited to see third party applications that use this capability to offer new functionality to advertisers. For details, check out this article, which includes a code sample and more, on Google Code.

Also part of the AdWords/Analytics ecosystem, AdWords Search Funnels was announced one month ago, and today is available in all AdWords accounts. We’re also making two short tips videos available (tip 1 and tip 2) that illustrate just a couple of the ways you can use Search Funnels.

Finally, supporting the ecosystem of all websites using Google Analytics, the new faster page tag comes out of beta. The asynchronous tracking snippet will soon be the default snippet when you set up a new profile. This new page tag will speed up your site and every site that uses Google Analytics across the web. If you want to upgrade from your existing tag (which we highly recommend), you can learn how to do that here.

We'll follow up with deep dive posts on each of these topics next week. Thanks for being part of the ecosystem.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

More choice for users: browser-based opt-out for Google Analytics on the way

Alden DeSoto — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:22:00 +0000

As an enterprise-class web analytics solution, Google Analytics not only provides site owners with information on their website traffic and marketing effectiveness, it also does so with high regard for protecting user data privacy. Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Our engineers are now hard at work finalizing and testing this opt-out functionality. We look forward to make it globally available to our users in the coming weeks.

Posted by Amy Chang, Group Product Manager, Google Analytics

Google Analytics API Case Study: Dolby Laboratories automates analytics reporting with Shufflepoint

Alden DeSoto — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:41:00 +0000

We're really excited to see how companies can grow their businesses around the Google Analytics API. Today, we're publishing a case study that illustrates how Shufflepoint, Inc. has used the Google Analytics API to build an innovative product offering which has helped Dolby Laboratories become more productive.

ShufflePoint uses the the API to provide enterprise integration tools, and they've developed a SQL-like query language for Google Analytics. Dolby Laboratories uses GAQL and other ShufflePoint tools to simplify their web analytics workflow, one that incorporates spreadsheets with complex rollups, filters, and intermediate table calculations as well as annotated presentations.

The Challenge:

"Our [analysis] process gives us a lot of flexibility between analysis and presentation," explains Dolby's web analyst. "But, manually consolidating site data into the spreadsheets was time and labor intensive." To streamline the process, the team at Dolby turned to tools from ShufflePoint.

The Results:

"With GAQL and Excel Web Queries, we solved our immediate need for our reports to be updated dynamically" said Dolby. "Our team’s learning and decision making process has really sped up since engaging Shufflepoint. They improved our custom reports, which we used to do manually within Google Analytics, by combining it with the automation and flexibility of using Google Analytics’ Data API.”

A New Business Opportunity

"ShufflePoint has its roots in Excel and PowerPoint, and our capabilities here are a true differentiator in the marketplace," says Chris Harrington, CTO at ShufflePoint. "It's great to take something like the Google Analytics API and develop unique solutions that hit a home run for clients like Dolby. The Google Analytics Data API has opened up new possibilities for us -- there are so many kinds of value-adds that you can create for companies out there. It's a new business opportunity.

Read the whole story in our client case study site.

Here are some screenshots of the Shufflepoint product using the API.

We continue to be impressed by the new solutions developers are bringing to market by leveraging the Google Analytics Platform. If you have developed a useful new tool or integration on top of Google Analytics, drop us an email at analytics-api@google.com. If it's innovative and useful we'll highlight it to our readers on this blog.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

No-tags Google Analytics Integration: Pion Lite from Atomic Labs

Alden DeSoto — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:35:00 +0000

We occasionally see a particularly inspiring integration with Google Analytics. Our latest source of inspiration comes from a product called Pion Lite by Atomic Labs. Pion Lite collects your traffic data and populates your Google Analytics reports -- without using Google Analytics page tags. Atomic Labs offers Pion Lite free to Google Analytics users.

Pion Lite passively "listens" to all of the network traffic between web servers and visitors. This approach reduces the overhead traditionally required to capture visitor data with page tags, and also provides complete data about site visitors including those using mobile devices and RSS readers.

Pion 3.0 includes a new setup wizard that makes it easy for new users to get up and running with Google Analytics by just answering a few questions. Pion talks directly with Google Analytics to populate your reports, offers customizable data capture, real-time data processing and integration, and supports advanced Google Analytics features such as custom variables and events, ecommerce and campaign tracking.

If you're attending SMX on Wednesday, you'll have a chance to learn about Pion Lite in person. Atomic Labs CEO Mike Dickey and Phil Mui, Google Analytics Senior Product Manager, will be giving back-to-back presentations at the SMX Expo starting at 1:20pm on Wednesday, March 3rd.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

Sharing Our Favorite Custom Segments

Alden DeSoto — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:29:00 +0000

Analysts often consider an aggregated view of their visitors when assessing reports in Google Analytics. Every visitor is assumed to be of the same type. But, looking at the information in an aggregated form is not nearly as useful as assessing the data for individual audience segments. Different types of visitors - whether new, returning, organic, paid, and so on - behave very differently and have vastly different expectations. The ability to understand what each of them wants, and how to cater to them, is important towards building a successful online presence.

Google Analytics makes it easy to segment your audience with advanced segments. Google Analytics includes a number of predefined advanced segments (e.g. new visitors, paid search visitors, iphone users) that you can take advantage of immediately. More importantly, however, you can create custom advanced segments tailored to your own specific needs.

One of the new Google Analytics features announced in October is the ability to share custom advanced segments with other users across accounts. Using this feature, I'll share links to my favorite custom segments that you can use too. Head over to the Solutions for Southeast Asia blog to learn more and for links to the following segments.

* Bounced visits

* Visits that dropped out of the funnel

* Brand keyword visits

* Brand keyword (organic) visits

* Brand keyword (paid) visits

* Non-brand keyword visits

* Non-brand (organic) visits

* Non-brand (paid) visits

* Visits from Country X

* First-time buy visits

* Return visit buys

Read the full article here.

Posted by Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Customer Solutions Engineer

We’re raising the bar on Google Analytics IQ

Alden DeSoto — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:56:00 +0000

Since the Google Analytics IQ launch, people from all over the world have taken the online course and test. Web analytics is increasingly important to all kinds of organizations. Online retailers, agencies, large consumer brands and non-profits are just a few of the many kinds of organizations that rely on people who are trained in Google Analytics. So, we've decided to raise the bar on what it means to be Google Analytics qualified and increase the minimum passing score from 75% to 80%.

If you're already Google Analytics qualified, but you received a score less than 80%, don't worry. This change doesn't affect your current qualification. But be sure to review the online course when it's time to renew your qualification (18 months after you initially qualified). At that time, you'll be expected to score at least 80%.

For details or to start the course, visit ConversionUniversity.com. There's a FAQ with details and a link to the Google Analytics IQ test. Best of luck to everyone!

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Google Analytics IQ: Make Sure You’re Searchable!

Alden DeSoto — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:17:00 +0000

If you've passed the Google Analytics Individual Qualification exam, you probably want people to know. One thing you can do is publish a link to your test record. But, you should also make sure that you're searchable from the Google Testing Center.

Here's how to make sure that people can find you. First, log in to the Google Testing Center. (Note: Use the login information you created during your first visit to the Google Testing Center.)

Access your profile on the Google Testing Center.

In the "Google Analytics Individual Qualification" section under "Would you like your name added to the database if you pass this test?", select the Yes option.

Click "Save Changes."

That's all there is to it. Now anyone searching for you on the Testing Center site will find you!

Posted by Helen Huang, Google Analytics Team

New Feature Spotlight: Analytics Intelligence

Alden DeSoto — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:43:00 +0000

How would you like to have 24-hour a day access to a dedicated assistant who is focused exclusively on your site's analytics? Your assistant would be so diligent and detailed that they wouldn't miss a thing. Sound too good to be true? We're giving you one. Say "Hello" to Analytics Intelligence.

Your new hardworking assistant, Analytics Intelligence, can't replace you or a professional analyst. But, it can find key information for you and your professional analysts -- so that your team can focus on making strategic decisions, instead of sifting through an endless sea of data.

Analytics Intelligence constantly monitors your website's traffic. Anytime something significant happens, it adds an automatic alert in your Intelligence reports. If your bounce rate suddenly jumps on one of your referrals, Analytics Intelligence creates an alert. Of course, it's up to you to go find out that the bounce rate jumped because someone inadvertently changed the landing page. But you might not have noticed that there was a problem that needed fixing if your trusty assistant hadn't alerted you.

Behind Analytics Intelligence is a sophisticated algorithmic intelligence engine that detects any anomalies in your traffic patterns. That means it's smart enough to know the difference between a change that's actually part of a larger trend versus a change that you might need to look into. But, from a user perspective, Analytics Intelligence couldn't be simpler.

Navigate to the Intelligence reports and you'll see three reports -- Daily Alerts, Weekly Alerts, Monthly Alerts. Daily Alerts contains all the alerts that are based on daily data. Weekly Alerts contains alerts based on weekly data. Monthly Alerts contains, you guessed it, alerts based on monthly data.

When you look at your alerts, you'll notice that your trusty assistant has already gone through your historical data and posted alerts. This highlights a key feature of Analytics Intelligence: you don't have to do anything -- alerts automatically get posted to your account.

The best way to come up to speed on Analytics Intelligence is to take a look at the alerts that are being created for your data. You can learn everything you need to know about how to interpret your alerts in this 2-minute video.

You can also instruct your assistant to be on the lookout for specific things that you want to monitor. Let's say you are running a billboard campaign in New York's Times Square. You want to be proactively informed regarding how the campaign is impacting traffic from New York. To do this, go the Manage Intelligence Alerts page,

and set up a custom alert (see the example, below).

You might even want to set up a second alert that checks for decreasing New York traffic, so you can see if the campaign is starting to wind down.

You'll then receive a custom alert, posted in your Daily Alerts, whenever one of these things happens. You can be notified by email as well, so you'll know what's going on even if you're not checking your reports.

If you're ever unsure about how to set up an alert, try starting with one of the templates on the Manage Intelligence Alerts page. Just click Copy, and then modify and rename the alert to fit your needs.

As with automatic alerts, the best way to learn about custom alerts is to try them out on your own data. You can also refer to the articles on Analytics Intelligence in the Google Analytics Help Center.

Sign in to your account to try it out. It's time to meet your new assistant!

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

New Free Google Analytics API Dashboard Application

Alden DeSoto — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:38:00 +0000

If you manage many Google Analytics profiles, it can be difficult to stay on top of all your top line metrics across accounts -until now. Trakkboard is a free, easy to use desktop application that allows analysts to create dashboards that pull data across different Google Analytics logins and different Google Analytics profiles to display top level metrics all within the same view.

This application was built using the Google Analytics API by our friends in Germany, Trakken GmbH and is available in English, German and Spanish. Once downloaded, you can add multiple Google Accounts, select Google Analytics Accounts and profiles, then choose from any of the pre-canned report widgets. The report widget will then appear on the dashboard. This process can be repeated with other Google Analytics Accounts, Profiles, and Widgets - and your customized dashboard is ready to use.

What's really nice is each report widget can be configured to automatically fetch new data from the API at a regular interval, for example, every hour. This dramatically reduces the time it takes to see top level metrics across all your accounts.

Some of the other available features include:

15 different report widgets available
Top/flop keywords widget (movers & shakers)
Drag-drop and resize report widgets
Update all widgets at the same time
Update individual widgets at set intervals
Use tabs for more dashboards
Resize report widgets
Notes widgets for comments
Add up to two Google Account Email addresses
FAQ Center available in English, Spanish, German

Rapid Fire Web Analytics Q and A with Avinash and Nick – Episode #2

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:21:00 +0000

This is our second video in our recent initiative to ask you to share your most burning questions via Google Moderator (link: Google Analytics Google Moderator site).

This week, Avinash brings his cast (leaving only one good analysis ninja arm) and we sit down to do a rapid fire Q&A to answer your questions.

In this episode we discuss:

Strategies for non-bounced non-converted visitors (Macro vs. Micro conversion)
Ways to report total number of keywords over time
Benefits to tracking transactions as conversion goals
Tracking unique visitors to specific web pages
Path analysis for keyword reports -- why it's bad and what to do instead
How Google Analytics can be used on affiliate sites
How site owners can exclude themselves from being tracked by Google Analytics
How to properly track sites that reside on different domains but use a shopping cart on a different, common, site (cross domain tracking)

Here are links to the resources discussed in the video:

Measuring Macro and Micro conversions
Create custom reports with Google Analytics API Excel Plugins
Absolute unique visitor tracking can be found under Metrics -> Site Usage -> Unique Visitors when creating a new custom report. Once created, you can apply any advanced segment (such as traffic from Google) to get the unduplicated number of visitors that came from Google.
Simple way to track exit clicks in Google Analytics
Excluding tracking certain visitors (like site owners and administers) by IP address
Configuring Google Analytics to track 3rd Party Shopping Carts
Cross domain tracking _getLinkerURL(), _link method reference

If you found this helpful, we'd love to hear your comments. If you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question or vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site. We will answer your latest questions in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.

Please add your thoughts about the Q&A via comments below. Thanks!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

Google Analytics IQ: Proof of Qualification Now Available!

Alden DeSoto — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:09:00 +0000

Since we launched the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ) program, many of you have asked for a way to prove to others that you have passed the Google Analytics IQ test and are therefore Google Analytics qualified. We're pleased to announce that you are now able to create and publish a link to your official test record. You can publish this link on your website or share it with others however you wish. When someone clicks on your link, they'll be taken to a page that looks like this:

Your test record can also display your test score and a contact email address if you wish to share this information. You can even create multiple test records -- for example, one that includes your contact email address and one that doesn't -- to share with different people.

Here's how to set it up. Go to the Google Testing Center and sign in to your account (using the same email to log in that you used when you took the test). Once you've signed in, click the Manage Your Test Records link (highlighted in yellow on the screenshot below).
You'll then see this screen (below). Click the Add link (highlighted in yellow).
On the next screen, you select the information that you want included in the test record. The Description can be any name you want; you'll be the only one who sees this name.
Save the record. You'll now see a test record. Click the record (shown in yellow, below) to get the link.

You'll now be able to share your test record by copying and pasting your link.
We encourage you to share and publish links to your test record, but please remember that you may not create logos or graphics (or reuse any logos that you find online) to promote your Google Analytics qualification. The link to your test record is your official proof of qualification.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

New Analytics API Features including Event Tracking!

Alden DeSoto — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:14:00 +0000

We are excited to be releasing new features -- features that have been prioritized based on feedback from you.

Event Tracking

Get Excited! Event Tracking, our number-one feature request, is available through the API. You can use event tracking to measure the number of user interactions with a website. For example, you can track:

the total number of times a white paper is downloaded
the length of time it takes to load a video
the number of validation errors users get when filling out a form

If you already have an integration with Google Analytics, Event Tracking is even more exciting. To illustrate, let's look at Sprout. Sprout's integration with Google Analytics helps customers track user interaction within their Sprout content. However, users currently must log into the Sprout interface to see billing and account management data, and then also log into Google Analytics to see how their own sprouts are performing. Now that event tracking is available through the API, companies like Sprout can pull the interaction metrics tracked by Google Analytics events and present them directly in clients' performance dashboards--effectively leveraging Google Analytics as a platform to power their analysis reports.

Ready to try out Event Tracking yourself? Check out the event tracking API docs, or fire up the Query Explorer tool.

Navigational data

The Google Analytics web interface provides a navigation report. Analysts use it to infer which links visitors click on, from one particular page to the next. Now that this data is available through the API, you can create new visualizations, such as custom site overlays, to see which links get the most clicks.

Increased filter length

The length of filter expressions has been increased to 128 characters. This enables developers to perform more complex queries with fewer requests to the API, saving bandwidth and quota.

There is a detailed list of all these changes in our public change log. We hope you find these features useful to your development and look forward to your comments and continued feedback. If you haven't done so already, please join our public Google group and let us know how you've been using the API.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

Advanced Segments for Event Tracking Now Available

Alden DeSoto — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:44:00 +0000

If you're tracking events on your site, you can now define advanced segments to isolate event related visits. So, for example, you can now see how visits with events compared to visits overall.

To do this, you'd define an advanced segment that only includes visits with events. (Set "Total Events Greater than 0" for your condition.)

Once you've defined the segment, make it active and you'll be able to make side-by-side comparisons of All Visits versus Visits with Events throughout your reports.

The variety of event related segments that you can create is only limited by the event details you track. So, if you track video interactions, you can create segments that only include visits during which videos were viewed. For a 2-minute walkthrough of how to set up event related segments, check out this video. To learn more about how to set up event tracking on your site, read the Google Analytics Event Tracking Guide on Google Code.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Using Google Analytics and Website Optimizer Together — in 60 Seconds

Alden DeSoto — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:47:00 +0000

A couple of months ago, we published a post on making your site a closer. But, before your website can close a sale, it has to get the visitor's attention. Presenting your visitor with a landing page that's relevant to what she's looking for is the best way to start the conversation and proceed towards the conversion or sale. Of course, you'll want to pair your landing pages with the appropriate keywords and ads. But, what else can you do to get more visitors to become customers?

Google Website Optimizer can help you identify the copy, images, and page layout combination that is most effective at getting visitors to convert. The key is to use Google Analytics to find out which landing pages are least effective, so you can start working on those first. Our first Google Analytics + Website Optimizer in 60 Seconds video shows you how.

Do you have a tip on using Google Analytics and Website Optimizer together? Feel free to post a comment and share. And, be sure to check out the techie guide for more advanced Website Optimizer tips.

Posted by Melissa Hsieh, Google Analytics Team

New Video: Segment Your AdWords Data

Alden DeSoto — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:36:00 +0000

If you use AdWords, you're probably familiar with the AdWords reports in the Google Analytics Traffic Sources section. Using these reports, you can compare AdWords campaigns and ad groups against each other and track individual keyword performance. But wouldn't it be useful to instantly compare - in every single one of your reports - the performance of AdWords traffic against the performance of all site traffic? Even better, what if you could compare a specific subset of AdWords traffic to AdWords traffic as a whole and compare both of these segments to all site traffic?

You can do all this and more using Advanced Segments. The latest Google Analytics in 60 Seconds video shows how to create a segment that includes only AdWords traffic and then how to refine that segment to include only a specific set of keywords. We illustrate how to isolate brand related keywords in the video, but with a little experimentation, you can create the AdWords segments that are most relevant to your business. Then you could compare how frequently visitors from each segment use the search box on your site (Site Search Overview report), how many new visits versus returning visits came from each segment (New vs. Returning report), and how many visits from each segment came from New York (Map Overlay report).

You only have to define your segments once and they'll be available to any user who has access to the profile. This means you can define segments for others in your organization to use. Also, segments can be used with historical data as well as current data. So, if you want to go back and see how an AdWords segment performed one year ago, you can.

Leave a comment and share your favorite AdWords segments.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

CADIE’s Google Analytics Reports

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 19:13:00 +0000

We are intrigued and only vaguely fearful to announce that after just half a day's tracking the reports from CADIE's homepage and other web properties suggest rather forcefully that the world is not yet entirely acclimated to her post-Web 2.0 design and content sensibilities. Yes, CADIE's pages have received an impressive number of visits in the past eighteen hours. But average time on site is a less than impressive twelve seconds, and 99.8% of visitors are immediately "bouncing" (by which in this case we mean leaving the page in stunned, incredulous horror) rather than exploring any further. Notice also the unprecedented -99% change in average time on site. We're at a loss to explain how it is that users are actually spending less time on CADIE pages today than they were yesterday, when the sites didn't actually exist, which we would have thought theoretically impossible and frankly are still kind of freaked out about in a future-Clark-Medal kind of way.

Where did CADIE go wrong? The content report for her homepage offers one adorable, annoying clue: pandas. CADIE gets lots of traffic on the top three pages but 99.8% bounce rates, 99.8% exit rates and 0 $Index value indicate that her thematic priorities and idiosyncratic design execution are scaring almost everyone away. We say "almost" because, it must be acknowledged, .2% of her visitors do seem to enjoy her (obsessively panda-related) content. We'll examine this segment momentarily, but first here's her content report.

We isolated the .2% CADIE traffic that seems to respond to her content. Take a look at the list of browser/platforms in the report below. It's kind of heartbreaking, actually, but it seems that CADIE's only high-engagement visits come from -- CADIE herself! We can only surmise, with considerable interest and a slightly higher level of fear, that she has been clicking away at her own site. Admiring her work, if you will.

Now if you'll excuse us, our electronics are starting to act a bit strangely so we're going to have to power down, gear up and run off to British Columbia, where we intend henceforth to live off the grid, and off the land. Good luck to us all.

Posted by the Google Analytics Team

Motion Chart New Features Scavenger Hunt

Alden DeSoto — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:05:00 +0000

Beginning today, you may notice a few new features in Motion Charts. But, we're not going to tell you what they are...yet. First, we'd like to see how many enhancements you can find. If you find a Motion Chart improvement, be sure to add a comment about it to this post. We'll follow up in a few days with a post highlighting all the changes and those people who were first to find new features.

Happy hunting!

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Getting Answers — Fast

Alden DeSoto — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:19:00 +0000

It's 10am, you've got a fresh cup of coffee, and you're excited to implement your latest Google Analytics-related idea. Today, you'll be setting up your ecommerce reporting or perhaps re-examining all of your keywords with the help of Motion Charts. You begin working and suddenly, you're not sure how to proceed. You have a question, and you need an answer -- hopefully before your coffee gets cold and your inspiration runs out.

A quick search of the Help Center yields an article that only partially addresses your question. You need help from someone who has already worked through this particular roadblock.

We're pleased to announce that, as of today, you have a new way of quickly getting the help you need. We've launched a new Forum within Google Help that allows you to ask questions about Google Analytics and have them answered by both Google employees and other Google Analytics users. You can easily identify answers from Google Employees, top contributors, seasoned posters, or new posters. The "Best Answers" (as voted by the community) gain the most visibility so that everyone can share valuable information. And a list of "Related Questions" comes up even as you are typing your question.

If you are in the forum to help other users, it's easy to find questions that need answers. Based on your contributions, you can be distinguished as a Top Contributor or seasoned poster. The old Analytics Help Group will still be accessible for information searches, but is closed for additional posts. This will allow the Google Analytics support staff to focus all their efforts on your new forum.

Now, back to work, before your coffee gets cold!

Posted by Melissa Hsieh, Google Analytics Team

Share Your Success (and get a free t-shirt, book, and shout-out)

Alden DeSoto — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 22:10:00 +0000

One of the things we never get tired of is seeing the variety of ways people use Website Optimizer. Starting next month, we'll profile actual Website Optimizer experiments so that all of our users can benefit from ideas and insights of the user community. Of course, what works for one website might not work for another but at least you might discover some ideas that are worth testing.

If you'd like to submit an experiment for us to consider featuring, please fill out the form here. If your experiment is selected, we'll send you a Website Optimizer t-shirt, book, and highlight your company in a future blog post and on the Website Optimizer main site!

Posted by Tom Leung, Website Optimizer Team

Testing for Dummies

Alden DeSoto — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 03:00:00 +0000

Sometimes we get so caught up in the latest and greatest trends in online testing that we forget that some people have heard of testing but haven't had it explained to them in laymen's terms. Rodney over at Reachd Blog has a great intro to testing that's perfect for folks who've not done testing before and want a quick summary of how testing works.

Nice job Rodney!

Posted by Tom Leung, Website Optimizer Team

For Those Who Want the White Glove Service

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:33:00 +0000

Most people like the idea of using Website Optimizer without having to allocate budget, negotiate contracts, and figure out user licenses or pricing schemes. You can literally start testing your site the same hour that you decide that it's something your organization needs to be doing.

To help you along the way, we offer several free support services, such as email tech support and a variety of self-help technical resources (see, for example, our ever expanding help center and lively user forum). Some of you want more personalized support for your experiments, and in that case, the good news is you can get all of this and more while keeping your total testing costs quite manageable.

Simply work with one of our Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants around the world. We screen, interview, train, and support a network of consulting firms that have shown expertise in—and enthusiasm for—Website Optimizer and all things testing. We have over a dozen of these agencies in multiple countries, and they offer Website Optimizer plans starting from a few hundred dollars for personalized technical support to total planning, design, installation, and analysis for enterprise customers.

If you want to pay $0 in technology licensing costs but want an official Website Optimizer expert to help you or do the work for you, we've got you covered. To request a proposal, check out the folks standing by now or consider purchasing a fixed price consulting package.

Posted by Tom Leung, Website Optimizer Team

European Testing Webinar

Alden DeSoto — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:51:00 +0000

Those of you in Europe who have been unable to attend previous webinars will be happy to learn that we've created a free one for Europe's time zones. Learn why website optimization is important to your business and get a thorough introduction to Website Optimizer and its core features. A live A/B test demo will show you just how quick and easy it is to launch a test. Here are the details:

Introduction to Website Optimizer: Test and Enhance Your Site

Language: English

Presenter: Eddy Jackson, EMEA Customer Marketing Team

Tuesday, September 23, 2008
3:00 - 4:00 PM GMT

Posted by Eddy Jackson, EMEA Customer Marketing Team

Decoding Google Analytics

Alden DeSoto — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 22:08:00 +0000

For many kinds of analysis, simply copying and pasting the Google Analytics tracking code into your site is more than enough. But there's a growing population of Analytics power users who want fine-grained control over their site tracking and who have a burning desire to understand and manipulate the behavior of Analytics. For those of you, we now offer Google Analytics on Google Code.

Google Code has information on everything you need to know to create a custom Analytics installation on your site. Do you want to change the longevity of your marketing campaigns? Or add a new search engine to the list of those Analytics recognizes? How about configuring tracking to use both Google Analytics and Urchin Software from Google?

If you're beta-testing Event Tracking, Google Code has an entire section to help you implement it on your site. There's an E-commerce overview and E-commerce API reference. And if you just want to learn more about how Analytics works, you can read about tracking code execution and how Analytics uses cookies.

Google Code addresses your most technical questions; it's not intended to replace the Help Center. And our Authorized Consultants are always around if you have custom tracking requirements but don't have a Google Code level of expertise in-house.

Posted by Patricia Boswell, Google Analytics Team

Top Myths about Google Website Optimizer

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:30:00 +0000

A lot of people ask us similar questions about what Website Optimizer can and can't do, so we thought we'd share the answers with everyone. If you've always wondered, or you've forgotten our answer ;), here's our own Top Myths List:

1. Does Google Website Optimizer work for organic traffic?

Yes! We alternate your content regardless of where visitors come from. You can optimize a page whose traffic is all organic, multiple paid keyword sources, all direct, or any combination of those three.

2. Can I optimize pages that aren't landing pages?

Sure. You can test product detail pages, purchase funnels, any place where there is HTML. You can even use it within web applications.

3. What about dynamic pages?

You can optimize those as well. The multivariate tags simply insert the alternate code as the visitor's browser renders the page being tested. Those tags can be part of a template or dynamically added by your web server using fancy logic. Furthermore, alternate content can be code that pulls dynamic content from a database.

4. Does Google Website Optimizer perform fractional analysis?

Yes. We can serve variations and combinations equally or provide main effects, fractional analysis. This assumes no interactions and can lead to initial insights much faster than full factorial analysis. More detail is on our Help Center.

5. Can I get dedicated account management, consulting or support?

Absolutely. You can get in-depth professional services from one of our Authorized Consultants who are experts at Website Optimizer experiment research, design, instrumentation, troubleshooting, live support, analysis and training. These consultants can be hired on retainer or by the hour.

6. Can I look at experiment data in conjunction with my web analytics data?

Yes. If you're doing an A/B test, simply look in your content report for each page.

If you're doing a multivariate test, look at the cookie we set for each visitor, which will indicate the combination to which they're assigned. Then segment your web analytics report by combination. Check out ROI Revolution's post on using Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer together.

7. Can I use Google Website Optimizer with my own goal tracking?

Yes, you can split your traffic, alternate the content, and then use another method to perform your statistical analysis. For example, you could run an A/B test, which offers a different telephone number for each page version. In this case, you could probably tell which page is most effective by simply counting the number of calls you receive on each number.

8. Can I run a test across more than one page?

You can put the tags for an experiment on an unlimited number of pages. For example, you can put our tags in a common header file or put them individually across multiple pages. Read more on our Help Center here and here.

9. Does Google Website Optimizer require me to use Google Analytics?

No. If you're using a non-Google web analytics service and are happy with it, you can still use Google Website Optimizer. Just add our tags to the pages where you want to run experiments and leave your existing web analytics tags as they are.

10. Does Google Website Optimizer require me to use Google AdWords?

No. If you already use AdWords, you can conveniently access Website Optimizer from the Campaign Management tab within AdWords. If you don't use AdWords, you can use our standalone version.

11. Can Google Website Optimizer be used on an enterprise website?

Sure. We use it on most of our own sites, such as AdWords, Gmail, and Google Earth. Fortune 500 companies have also used Google Website Optimizer since we launched in late 2006.

12. Can I track non-page goals?

Sure, goal tags don't need to be implemented as part of a separate goal page. You can record a conversion when someone submits a form, clicks on a link, or dwells on a page after a certain number of seconds.

13. Do I need to retag my pages to run a new experiment on the same page?

If it's a multivariate experiment, you can use our copy feature to re-use tags and launch a new experiment directly.

14. Is it really free?

Yes! We think better designed web content makes the web more efficient and benefits users, Web search and advertisers.

Posted by Tom Leung, Website Optimizer Team

One of Your Biggest Website Optimizer Peeves has been Pruned

Alden DeSoto — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:23:00 +0000

As many of you know, Website Optimizer divides your traffic evenly among all of your page variations for the life of your test. This strategy lets us provide more precise estimates about how each variation is performing. It also allows every variation to have an extended opportunity to reach its full potential over the test's duration.

Nevertheless, many users find that they don't gain much extra value from knowing how bad a variation is performing once they are satisfied that it won't likely be a winner. If a variation is clearly performing poorly, you may want to remove it from your test and have all subsequent traffic be allocated to your better performing variations. That way, you'll get statistically significant results quicker, while maximizing your conversion rate.

In the past, there wasn't an easy way for you to disable low performing or illogical combinations. You'd have to stop a test, make a copy, lose all your test data, and then launch a new test. That's all changing starting today. Now, you can simply select any number of page variations from your experiment report, click our new "Disable" button, and you're done. Easy as that. All your future traffic will be sent to your remaining page variations, and you'll be on the path to quicker, more actionable test results.

We've made a few other enhancements that we hope will make your testing experience even more meaningful. We've updated our reporting interface to better indicate when a page variation is actually a high confidence winner as opposed to just one that happens to be performing well at a given time. We'll also now support offline validation for A/B tests - if your test pages aren't accessible to Website Optimizer, you can instead directly upload a copy of your tagged source code and we'll make sure that everything is tagged correctly.

If you're unfamiliar with Website Optimizer, no worries. We have a wealth of resources to get you up and running in no time. Start by watching our new product tour, A/B experiment demo, and multivariate experiment demo. You'll see how quick and easy it is to create Website Optimizer tests.

We'll also be speaking at the Post-Click Optimization panel at SES San Jose on Thursday, 8/21, so feel free to stop by and say hello. Our good friend and industry expert, Bryan Eisenberg, will be at SES as well to talk about his new book, Always Be Testing. There should be lots of testing goodness in the air. We hope to see you in San Jose!

Posted by Jon Stona, Website Optimizer Team

SES San Jose is here!

Alden DeSoto — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:20:00 +0000

And boy do we love it. The Search Engine Strategies conference is right up our alley. Google will be there in force, sponsoring the show, with a giant booth for AdWords and Google Analytics. Googlers will be headlining or participating in numerous sessions, and we're all looking forward to meeting interested users and hearing what you think about our products. Google Analytics has been given a 20% discount code: 2OG00 (two-oh-gee-zero-zero). Feel free to use it when you register here.

Here are a few highlights:

- Monday: Author and analytics/testing thought leader Bryan Eisenberg will be at the networking lunch on Monday signing copies of his new book, Always Be Testing. At 11:15am, Bryan and Brett Crosby will be speaking at the Pay Per Conversation session.

- Tuesday: Tom Leung and Avinash Kaushik will host the "What's new with Google Analytics and Website Optimizer" session at 2:45pm. Brett will be on the Measuring Success panel at 4pm. Also, come try some TCHO chocolate at the booth, compliments of Google Analytics. And, don't forget to register for Google Dance!

- Thursday: Tom Leung will speak at the Post-Click Marketing session at 1:30pm.

Be sure to drop by the booth. We'll be there to answer your questions and hand out a few t-shirts. We're looking forward to seeing you there!

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

SES: We’ll Be There

Alden DeSoto — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:33:00 +0000

Search Engine Strategies, San Jose is next week, August 18-22. On Tuesday, August 19, Tom Leung and Avinash Kaushik will host the "What's new with Google Analytics and Website Optimizer" session, and Tom will speak at the "Post-Click Marketing: Converting Search Engine Traffic" session on Thursday afternoon. Author and analytics/testing thought leader Bryan Eisenberg will be at the networking lunch on Monday signing copies of his new book, Always Be Testing. And, Bryan and Brett Crosby will be speaking at the Pay Per Conversation session on Monday morning.

We're also providing free landing page diagnoses on selected landing pages. If you don't play, you can't win! If you want to participate, be sure to send us your landing page by this Wednesday, August 13.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Website Optimizer and Google Analytics Teams

Get Your Free Free Landing Page Check Up

Alden DeSoto — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:42:00 +0000

Back-to-school season is coming up, and you know what that means: school supplies and doctor check-ups. Over the next couple of weeks, we'll be giving free check-ups to a few landing pages. Just e-mail us the URL of your top landing page before August 13 (that's next Wednesday), and if we pick your page, we'll e-mail you our diagnosis.

We'll also present our landing page 'patients' at SES San Jose, suggest potential improvements, and (with your permission) include the diagnoses in a future blog post.

And school supplies? Well, our SES San Jose booth should have some. =)

Posted by Tom Leung, Website Optimizer Team

Thought Leaders

Alden DeSoto — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:20:00 +0000

The past year has seen a blossoming of great advice and ideas about Website Optimizer and website testing. Advertisers are seeing economic pressure to boost efficiency, testing tools such as ours are more accessible, and more people are focusing on post-click optimization--giving customers the best possible experience from search to sale. I wanted to point out some highlights from this convergence of all things testing:

Bibles. Check out Tim Ash's and Bryan Eisenberg's new manuals on testing. I like Tim's book for its breadth of coverage--everything from business cases to ROI, process and math. I like Bryan's book for the gazillion ideas on what can and should be tested. You can download Tim's appendix for free and pre-order Bryan's book, which launches soon at SES San Jose.

Website Optimizer 101 Back during our beta days, Conversion Rate Experts published a great article on testing tips, which caught lightning in a bottle and was quickly digg'd, linked to, and forwarded by tons of people. They relaunched their site a few weeks ago, and their famous Website Optimizer article is as relevant today as it was when it first came out.

More tips. The guys at VKI Studios have a nice article on common first time tester mistakes. If you're not yet a pro, chances are you're probably making or about to make some of these mistakes right now. And WiderFunnel has 3 great tips on how to instantly improve almost any page. The advice about copy length is timeless.

Analytics workaround. ROI Revolution has made an Analytics-Website Optimizer integration workaround. If you love both tools, you absolutely must look into this one.

Calculator. Our friends at WebShare put together a handy sample size calculator. It's a great way to find the right number of page variations before you actually create them.

Hope you enjoy these standouts as much as I have.

Posted by Tom Leung, Website Optimizer Team

Joomla and Website Optimizer: It can be done

Alden DeSoto — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:37:00 +0000

Lately, we've heard more and more people ask us how to use Website Optimizer on a Joomla-powered site. If you're interested, the folks at Compass Designs have a great step-by-step tutorial on how to patch Joomla to accept Website Optimizer tags. Joomla isn't currently a Website Optimizer Technology Partner per se, but we're delighted that our two products are now compatible.

And if anyone in the Joomla community could develop auto-tagging capabilities so there's even less copying and pasting of tags, that would be even more awesome. ;-)

Posted by Tom Leung, Website Optimizer Team

Help Make Website Optimizer Better

Alden DeSoto — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:54:00 +0000

Posted by Dawn Shaikh, Google Website Optimizer User Research Team

In the spirit of constant testing and improvement—as we urge you to do—we're planning some user testing of our own this month. If you have a spare hour, it'd be great to get your participation, and you'll get an AdWords credit! All you need to do is log in to your computer at a specific time and give feedback on some early feature concepts we're kicking around. Here are details:

The tests last 60 minutes
Compensation is a $100 AdWords credit
Once you confirm, we'll contact you to arrange the start time

To participate, you need to:

be at least 18 years old
sign our Usability Non-Disclosure Agreement
have a desktop or laptop computer with Windows 2000/XP and Internet Explorer installed (sorry, we can't support Macs quite yet!)
have a Broadband Internet connection or stronger (such as DSL, Cable, or T1)
have a phone (cell or land line) with a handless option so you can speak on the phone and use your computer simultaneously

If you have time to help, please fill out this online form. The idea is to keep improving our product, so the more of you we get input from, the better it'll be.

Thanks!

You Know Testing is Going Mainstream When…

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:51:00 +0000

Posted by Tom Leung, Website Optimizer Team

People start drawing testing cartoons. I was speaking at a conference in Chicago about Website Optimizer and after the talk, one of the people in the audience showed me some cartoons he had doodled during my presentation. I'm quite accustomed to people doodling, IM'ing, and feed reading during my presentations and it's usually unrelated to what I'm talking about. I was quite impressed when Sean D'Souza offered to actually show me his drawings. I thought, wow, this guy has come chutzpah.

To my surprise, the drawings all related to a number of points about testing that I was trying to convey via bullet points in my presentation. Here are some of my favorites, with my reactions:

Takeaway: Online testing is enabling its adopters to outpace competition who keep sending precious traffic to poorly performing pages.

Takeaway: This is how some folks feel when seeing poorly designed landing pages. On the one hand, we feel there's an opportunity to help people dramatically improve their websites. On the other hand, it's sometimes shocking to see how sub-optimal landing pages can be.

Takeaway: People can get really, really zealous once they get into website optimization. Obviously, this idea takes testing a tad too far, but it's not the first time we've heard people take it to heart.

Takeaway: Unless you have tons of traffic, your best opportunity to boost conversion rates with statistical significance is to try some really big changes (think dramatic layout and visual changes plus text changes as opposed to pure text tweaks alone).

Takeaway: Sometimes people get so happy after they've launched their experiment that they obsessively check reports expecting one combination to pull away instantly. The goal is to be patient and understand that you want to find the long-term winner, not this hour's random winner.

Takeaway: This is one of my favorites. Sometimes people try to create as complicated and large tests as they can without realizing that a simple A/B test often gets you 80% of the gains with 20% the complexity and effort.

Thanks to Sean for sending us the pics. We heart them.

New Plans for More Flexible Service

Alden DeSoto — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:06:00 +0000

Posted by Curtis Lee, Website Optimizer Team

We previously wrote about the variety of free support resources we offer to enable almost anyone to start testing successfully.

However, one of the most requested things we hear from you, our beloved users, is your desire to get live and expert technical assistance for your pressing testing needs. We've heard your requests. With cooperation from participating Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants, we've just launched the Google Website Optimizer Service Plans.

These flexible plans provide hourly technical service in three packages depending on your needs:

1. $250/hour: For specific questions and quick answers. Maximum 1 call per hour. No commitment, no obligation.

2. $600/3 hours (in increments of 30 min): For more complex issues at discounted hourly rates. Must be used within 6 months after first hour of service is used.

3. $1,200/8 hours (in increments of 30 min): Good for 12 months after first hour of service is used.

Partner services include, but are not limited to:

* Experiment design
* Experiment set-up and implementation
* Report analysis
* A la carte incident consultation
* Phone and internet-chat support
* Personalized training

For those who are accustomed to retaining the assistance of expert implementation consultants for their IT needs, this is a great and affordable way to start testing and increasing your conversions. You can get started today by contacting a participating authorized consultant. And of course, our roster of consultants is always available for more long-term consultation.

If you're interested in becoming a Website Optimizer Authorized Consultant, you can see program details here.

A Way To Make Testing Easier

Alden DeSoto — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:15:00 +0000

Posted by Jon Stona, Website Optimizer Team

One question we get asked often is whether Website Optimizer will work with content-management system (CMS) platforms. The short answer is yes: if you get our JavaScript tags onto your pages, Website Optimizer will function with any tool you use to build, manage, or serve your pages.

Of course, there are use cases when a particular CMS platform's architecture might make it less easy for you to implement Website Optimizer tests. With this in mind, we launched our global Technology Partner Program this morning, to call attention to those specific platforms that are certified as compatible with Website Optimizer.

Although you can still use Website Optimizer on non-certified platforms, our partners make it easier by offering specific documentation and technical support. They can also automate the process of adding Website Optimizer tags, so you can launch experiments faster than ever, with fewer dependencies on your IT team.

We see this program as a win for CMS providers and website-owners alike. CMS platforms of any size can offer their customers a powerful A/B and multivariate testing solution, which might have cost them millions of dollars to develop internally. Site-owners who build and manage their websites through these platforms can in turn launch Website Optimizer experiments more easily to help improve their conversion rates. And perhaps most importantly, the web becomes a more useful place for users since more web pages will be improved through customer input.

Check out a great video from Emovendo, one of our Technology Partners, to see for yourself how quick and simple testing can be. Loretta Jones, who runs marketing for Echosign, has been using Emovendo's PageVester application that has integrated with both Website Optimizer and Salesforce.com. She puts it best by saying, "With PageVester, it takes only a few minutes to create and test landing pages using Google Website Optimizer, so we have the flexibility to both quickly create landing pages and quickly determine which pages yield the best performance.”

Another customer,LA.com has used Clickability's platform to run A/B tests on their newsletter subscriptions page. They tested two alternate page designs against their original layout and content:

Original Page

Variation 1

Variation 2

By leveraging Clickability's integration with Website Optimizer, the LA.com marketing team was able to build the alternate pages and launch their experiment in no time. And their first variation outperformed the original by over 18%, while the second actually did worse. All this insight, for minimal marketing and IT work.

If your current CMS provider isn't yet a Website Optimizer Technology Partner, we encourage you to ask them to join; it's a free and easy way for both of you to benefit.

If you can copy and paste, you can test.

Alden DeSoto — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:18:00 +0000

Posted by Tom Leung, Website Optimizer Team

We spend a lot of time making Google Website Optimizer very flexible so you can do all kinds of neat experiments. You can test multiple pages and goals, and slice and dice a single page's content to come up with dozens of different recipes. See some of these more advanced testing ideas here in the Website Optimizer Help Center.

But, we also know that many of you just want a really simple way to compare two different pages. That's why the Website Optimizer user interface has been designed to walk you through each step of setting up an experiment.

I was at a conference a couple weeks ago and people were amazed how easy it is to set up an AB test. It requires minimal technical expertise and can literally be done in a few minutes. If you'd like to see for yourself, check out this short video where we set up a test from start to finish in a few minutes.

Pick Websites Like Mutual Funds

Alden DeSoto — Sat, 17 May 2008 05:23:00 +0000

Posted by Tom Leung, Website Optimizer Team

When you think about it, websites are like mutual funds. You spend money buying them, and you expect them to bring in as much money as they can each year. But unfortunately, people seem to be more rational when selecting funds than when picking websites.

Let's say you're picking a retirement-savings mutual fund. Chances are you'll investigate the current and historical performance of each fund. It would be pretty unusual for you to take money out of an existing fund and put it into a new one without comparing how the two perform, right? In fact, if you took all your money out of one fund and put it into another one based only on gut feel or opinion, people would call you crazy.

Now let's look at how we do website redesigns today. We typically invite local agencies to razzle and dazzle us with their portfolios. We choose things that look nice and make us feel good about spending tens of thousands of dollars (if not more) on a redesign. We get enchanted by talk of Web 2.0, widgets, gadgets, video, surveys and interactive movies. If we're using a really good agency, they'll ask for or already know our current web-analytics metrics so there's a baseline against which to measure. And after months of brainstorming and discussions, we see initial concept mocks, and the new site is unveiled—perhaps a press release is issued.

The irony is, that launch day should really be the first day of a test, to see if the new site really does perform better than the old one. Sure, you think it looks better and your gut tells you it must perform better (especially since you've become emotionally invested in it). But the reality is you don't know. Even if you compare baseline web stats, you won't know if improvements are seasonal (almost any redesign in the fall outperforms a summer predecessor) or due to another external factor (like a new ad campaign).

The good news is, with Google Website Optimizer you can now pick a website as you would a mutual fund. You can run an A/B test and have half of your visitors land on your old site and half on your new site. (Here's more info on setting up a simple site bake-off. Here's a video tutorial for setting up general A/B tests in under 5 minutes.) Then you can measure which version does best. And if the new site really does do better, time to hire that agency for more work. ;-)

Our Optimal User Community

Alden DeSoto — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:02:00 +0000

Posted by Tom Leung, Website Optimizer Team

Ever since we launched Website Optimizer as an invitation-only beta a year ago, we created a Google Group for our users to exchange advice and discuss how to get the most out of the product. This small group has steadily grown from a few dozen members in 2007 to over 1,700 of our most active users today. And to make the community's content accessible to anyone, we've started indexing the Group posts in our Help Center search results.

The Group has become an invaluable resource for some of our newest users, and a favorite resource for advanced beginners. For that, we have to thank a number of our hard-core users and their tips, tricks, and tales of trial-and-error.

These folks volunteer to answer questions and share their learnings out of their passion for the power of web experimentation in general and for Website Optimizer in particular. Our most active user so far is Ophir Prusak, with an incredible 239 posts and an average post rating by other members of 5 stars! Honorable mentions go to other power posters such as CoffeeGuy, Robbin Steif, Chris Goward, ShoreTel, and Limepickle. You can see all of them and over 1,700 others in action here in the Google Group.

We offer support via our Help Center articles, webinars and video tutorials, email customer support, testing tips, and network of Authorized Consultants. The community on our Google Group, however, has been instrumental in helping people see great success from website optimization.

If you have a question about Website Optimizer, feel free to visit the Google Website Optimizer Group: chances are someone has already asked it, and someone else has answered.

Testing Best Practices from eMetrics

Alden DeSoto — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:29:00 +0000

Posted by Tamara Micner

It's been an enlightening day at eMetrics San Francisco. Our Multivariate Testing Panel raised key points about the good, the bad and the ugly of website testing, with one we like to stress: before you start testing, get consensus on your measures of success.

It's crucial to make sure your team agrees on goals for your tests. There's no point trying to increase downloads if everyone else (or your boss) would prefer more sign-ups. Once you know what you're aiming for, you can launch the most relevant tests for your site, and your results will be even more valuable.

For more best practices, see our earlier post about key testing concepts and our Helpful Hints on our website.

Test Your High Value Pages

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:45:00 +0000

Posted by Jon Stona, Website Optimizer Team and Laura Melahn, Google Analytics Team

Trying to optimize a large website for conversion can be a daunting task if you don't have a plan. The most important pages to test are those that have the biggest impact on your site's success. By using Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer together, you can identify these high value pages and set up experiments that will eliminate the guesswork from their design.

Your high value landing pages

In his talk on the Web Analytics panel at SES, Avinash Kaushik recounted his experience searching for a new faucet. The top paid ad took him to a page focused on sinks rather than faucets; he was immediately turned off and bounced from the site.

What's the lesson here? Landing pages are key pages to optimize because they are your visitors' first (and often last) impression of your website. If a visitor lands on a page that doesn't provide the information she's looking for, she'll probably leave without clicking any further. For high-traffic landing pages, this can add up to a lot of lost visitors.

That's why it's so important to find, and fix, high-traffic landing pages that lose a high percentage of visitors. Look at the "Top Landing Pages" report within the Content section of Google Analytics. Pages that have both a high Bounce Rate (the percentage of visits that resulted in the visitor immediately leaving the site) and large number of Entrances need to be redesigned.

The Google Analytics Landing Pages report (Content Section) shows a list of top landing pages ordered by the number of entrances on the left. On the right, the Bounce Rate compared to site average is graphically displayed. Pages with a high number of Entrances and a high Bounce Rate (red bar), are good candidates for optimization.

Don't forget about funnel pages

Other high value pages are those that lead visitors to your goal pages. Visitors reach a goal page once they have have made a purchase or completed another desired action, such as a registration or download. In Google Analytics, you can specify up to ten pages in a defined funnel representing the path that you expect visitors to take on their way to the goal page (conversion!). A page that is part of a goal funnel is another great place to focus website optimization efforts.

The "Funnel Visualization" report within the Goals section of Google Analytics shows you how many visitors exit the funnel at each step in the path towards the goal page. In the funnel visualization below, you can see that most visitors in this funnel are lost in the transition from the "View Shopping Cart" step to the "Login" step. Only 7% of visitors move past this step, but of those who do, many go on to make a complete an order! Limiting steps in paths to a goal, like the "View Shopping Cart" step below, is another great place to begin your website optimization experiments.

The Google Analytics Funnel Visualization report (Goals Section) shows the pages where visitors abandon a goal path. Pages that lose a high percentage of traffic on the path towards a website goal are good candidates for optimization.

You know which pages to test...

A little competition can get your team excited about content experimentation. Try asking a couple of your co-workers and perhaps your boss for suggestions on alternate variations of a high value page. Label each of the suggested variations in Website Optimizer with the contributor's name. Then, ask another set of co-workers to predict which variation will emerge victorious. You can monitor the progress each day to see how everyone's suggestions and predictions are stacking up. Keep in mind that it usually takes at least one or two weeks for the definitive winner to emerge. Once Website Optimizer has determined the winning page, you'll not only have a better performing page, but if you're lucky, you'll have bragging rights in your office.

Search the Google Analytics site!

Alden DeSoto — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 00:51:00 +0000

This weekend, we added a search box to the Google Analytics site. We rarely blog site changes, but this small enhancement to the site will help in two important ways to create a better visitor experience. First, it lets you, our visitors, quickly find the information you're looking for. Second, thanks to the recent addition of Site Search reporting to Google Analytics, we'll have a better understanding of how we can make the site more useful and relevant to our visitors' needs.

You can add search to your site too. Providing a search box on your site on your site and tracking how people use it is one of the best ways we know of to understand visitor intent. Read this article if you want to learn more about how to leverage the information you get from Google Analytics Site Search reporting. Or, watch this video.

If you are looking for a search box to put on your site, you might consider using the Google Custom Search Engine (both free and paid versions are available).

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Announcing the new ConversionUniversity.com

Alden DeSoto — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:43:00 +0000

I'm excited to announce that we've just launched an updated version of ConversionUniversity.com, now available in all 25 Google Analytics supported languages. From help on optimizing your AdWords ROI to Google Website Optimizer testing strategies, Conversion University's mission is to offer tips and best practices designed to help you improve your online results.

The latest article by Avinash Kaushik, Five Questions to Ask of Your Site Search Data, is an excellent primer on one of the best ways to understand visitor intent. Conversion University also has pointers to our latest video content on the YouTube Google Conversion University playlist, including full presentations from our Conversion University events. So, go ahead and click a link. It's like talking to an industry guru, one on one!

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Announcing new graphing tools, ga.js tracking, and six new languages

Alden DeSoto — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:09:00 +0000

Today, we're adding several updates to Google Analytics including the ability to graph multiple data points at once, ga.js tracking, and six new languages.

All accounts have access to a new beta feature that allows you to graph two metrics against each other and see how they correlate. For example, you might want to see how your AdWords traffic compares with your site average or how one conversion goal compares to another over time. Here are the instructions on how to access this new graphing feature.

We are also rolling out the new ga.js page tag which we recommend you use for all new accounts and new profiles for new domains. Although your existing urchin.js page tags will continue to work, you may wish to update them to ga.js anyway. This will allow you to take advantage of the most up-to-date tracking functionality as it is added to Google Analytics. An immediate benefit you'll notice is that the ga.js tags allow you to track ecommerce transactions in a more readable way. And, we've created a special resource on the ga.js javascript for power users who want more control over Google Analytics tracking. If you do choose to update your site to ga.js, please note that the old tracking code (which uses urchin.js) and the new tracking code (which uses ga.js) will not work if placed on the same page together.

Finally, we begin supporting six additional languages: Thai, Filipino, Indonesian, Czech, Hungarian, and Portuguese (Portugal). You can select any one of the 25 Google Analytics supported languages from the Language pulldown menu on the Analytics Settings-->My Account page.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Site Search Now Available

Alden DeSoto — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 18:45:00 +0000

We recently announced several new features. Beginning today, all Google Analytics accounts have access to the first of these features to be released: Site Search. It's currently only available if your language preference is set to English; it will be available in all languages soon.

Google Analytics has always shown you how people search to find your site. With Site Search, you can now see how people search your site once they are already on it. This is a goldmine of information because every time visitors search, they literally tell you in their own words what they are looking for. You'll not only see their initial searches, but how they attempted to refine searches when they didn't find what they were looking for. You'll see which pages they searched from and where they ended up. And you'll see how site search correlates with conversion and ecommerce activity. As we beta tested this feature, we became even more convinced of the value of having a search box on a site.

If you don't have a search box on your site yet, you might consider using the new Google Custom Search Engine (both free and paid versions are available). If you already have a site search solution, it is highly likely that our new Site Search reports will already work with it (including Google's GSA and Mini products).

The Site Search reports appear within the Content section. You'll need to enable Site Search to see the reports in the navigation.

Perhaps the easiest way to dive into the reports is to click Overview under Site Search and explore the links that appear on the right hand side of the report. (See the screenshot of links, above.)

For those who want to use the report navigation, the reports are broken down as follows. Overview is both a summary of site search activity and a jumping-off point to discover additional site search information. Usage allows you to compare visits that included site search against visits that did not include site search.

Search Terms shows you what people search for and how they attempt to refine unsuccessful searches. Start Pages and Destination Pages shows you where visitors begin their searches and where they end up. Categories shows you the product groups and areas on your site that visitors search. Trending allows you to track individual search metrics over time. The Segments menu, available in most reports, allows you to cross segment any group of searchers.

We have several new articles in our Help Center to help you get started like How do I set up Site Search for my profile? and How do I identify my search query parameter?.
You can click on the Common Questions link from any report to see Help articles related to Site Search. Finally, you may wish to read Avinash's excellent tutorial on the five things you should do with your site search data.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Exciting Announcements at eMetrics Today

Alden DeSoto — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:56:00 +0000

Today at the eMetrics Summit in Washington, D.C. Brett Crosby announced several Google Analytics features that will be rolled out over the coming weeks. Here's a rundown.

First, you'll be able to use Google Analytics to track site search activity. Simply edit any of your Google Analytics profiles to enable "Site Search" and you can find out what people search for on your site and where these searches lead. Located in the Content section of your Google Analytics reporting interface, Site Search reports show you the keywords and search refinement keywords people use, the pages from which people begin and end their searches. You can also see how search on your site affects site usage, conversion rates, and e-commerce activity. (BTW, if you don't have a search box on your site, you might want to try the free and newly launched Google Custom Search Engine.)

We'll begin a limited beta test of the new Google Analytics Event Tracking capability. These new reports are designed to help you understand how people use and interact with Ajax, Flash and multimedia on your site without artificially increasing your pageview metrics. In order to provide a way for you to define and track a wide variety of applications and interactions, there will be a new tracking module called ga.js. Using ga.js on your site instead of urchin.js means you can continue to take advantage of the latest advanced tracking enhancements (such as Event Tracking) as we release them. Although we suggest everyone upgrade to the new JavaScript, if you aren't interested in Event Tracking and you're already getting all the information you need from Google Analytics, you don't need to change your tags.

We'll also initiate a limited beta test in the coming weeks of our new Outbound Link Tracking feature. This feature will report on links visitors clicked on your site that direct them to another site. If you have already used the "Urchin Tracker" to track your outbound links, you may want to avoid changing your code twice by waiting to upgrade your JavaScript to ga.js until this feature is fully rolled out.

Finally, Brett announced the Urchin Software from Google limited beta. Urchin is a software product that you run on your own servers. Its reporting interface is similar to the previous Google Analytics interface. If you would like to participate in the limited beta, please contact one of our Authorized Consultants.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Reverting Back to Original "Average Time on Site" Calculation Today

Alden DeSoto — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 17:52:00 +0000

We recently introduced a new way of calculating "Average Time on Site" that removed visitors who "bounce" from your website (people who hit one page of your site and then leave). This updated calculation attempted to give you a better idea of how long engaged visitors spend on your website. However, many of you prefer the original calculation: the total time on site for all visits divided by the total number of visits. So today we are changing it back.

Effective immediately, all current and historical Average Time on Site metrics are calculated using the original methodology. This ensures that your data-set is consistent. So if you compare data from today or tomorrow with data from two weeks ago, it will be an apples to apples comparison.

Two other updates in this release...

The number of Absolute Unique Visitors displayed in the Visitors Overview report previously did not match the number of unique visitors in the Absolute Unique Visitors report. This is because the Absolute Unique Visitor report shows data over time and was therefore summing daily unique visitors. The Absolute Unique Visitors report no longer sums the day by day totals but instead displays the absolute unique visitors metric that is displayed in the Visitors Overview.

Careful, this one's a bit geeky. We recently changed the way we ordered URL parameters. Why is this important? Take a look at the following two URLs:

www.google.com?rooms=3&beds=2
www.google.com?beds=2&rooms=3

Instead of considering these two URLs as a single URL: www.google.com?beds=2&rooms=3 (i.e. alphabetically ordered parameters), we now consider these as two separate URLs (i.e. without reordered parameters). We made this change to accommodate those of you with filters or goals dependent upon parameter order.

We are always seeking to improve the value you get from Google Analytics. We try to be right 100% of the time, but we're human.

Posted by Brett Crosby, Sr. Manager, Google Analytics