Google Data » Sebastian Tonkin

Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) – Teach People to Fish

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:54:00 +0000

What works better, a centralized web analytics team with deep technical knowledge, or non-expert users spread throughout an organization? This was the question faced by Amy Sample when she joined PBS Interactive as web analytics director in the fall of 2007. Amy shared her story with us in response to our call to share your web analytics story.

Implementation

PBS Interactive helps individual PBS producers and local PBS stations create and promote microsites for programming like NOVA, American Masters, and Sid the Science Kid. Amy had the difficult task of helping these managers make educated decisions about how to improve their online show sites.

When Sample came on board, she learned that PBS had standardized on a single analytics tool. This was a good first step, but few at the company were familiar with the tool and the reports it generated were not being used to take action. Producers wanted to know more about how people interacted with microsites for their programs, but they weren't sure what to focus on. At the same time, the analytics group had a hard time keeping up with demands from so many stakeholders. According to Sample "The producers wanted to dig deeper into their site data than a monthly report could provide."

Amy's response was two-fold. First, after consulting with a pilot group of producers and other members of the interactive group, she decided to deploy an installation of Google Analytics. In Sample's words "We chose Google Analytics because we had to deal with a diverse group of needs and very limited resources. We wanted a system where a user with very little training could get insights right away."

Second, Sample worked with LunaMetrics, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, to manage the complex issues PBS faced with cross-domain tracking and a complicated account structure. LunaMetrics also created training materials, hosted an on-site training for PBS staff, and conducted a series of training webinars for producers and local stations.

Applying the Data

As it turns out, despite challenges around getting resources assigned to tag pages and working out the right account structure, deploying Analytics was actually the easy part. In Sample's experience, the more challenging problem came in spreading knowledge and awareness of Analytics through the organization in a way that lets people take action on the data. "My approach has been to teach people how to fish," Sample explains, "It's been about doing training classes and one-on-one work with key practitioners, creating specific training decks by job function and getting other groups to use Analytics data in their daily activities."

Google Analytics has been a key facilitator in the transformation of PBS online. Stakeholders are no longer focused on monthly reports. Increasingly, they are using Analytics to inform actual business decisions. Here are some examples highlighted by the PBS team:

Site Search Tracking - The PBSKIDS.org site has implemented changes as a result of insights gleaned from site search tracking that have increased traffic to the site 30% in the last year.
Funnel Optimization - The PBSKIDS Island team used funnels to optimize their registration path resulting in a 3x improvement in conversion rate.
Content Optimization - An analysis of users’ video consumption behavior on PBS.org and PBSKIDS.org led to the development of the PBS Video and PBSKIDS GO! Broadband portals. PBS went even further, basing a full 2008 PBS.org redesign on the data that indicated which content visitors access.
Advertising Optimization - PBS' marketing group also looks at post-click behavior for their display ad campaigns to zero-in on referring sites that send high-quality traffic. They use this information to optimize successive campaigns.

Long-Term Vision

Sample's long term vision is to extend Analytics to measure engagement with PBS content both on-site and off-site. She also hopes to gauge the impact of online content on TV tune-in and track online donations, while expanding her training efforts to teach producer colleagues how to segment traffic and drill deeper into visitor behavior on their microsites.

The lesson learned is that no matter what analytics tool you're using, a well-planned deployment is only a first step. The hard part is "teaching people to fish," and making analytics data a key component in your organization's everyday business decisions.

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

Segment your Traffic with the User Defined Report

Sebastian Tonkin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Have you ever been in the Visitors section of your favorite Google Analytics profile and wondered what the heck “User-Defined” was? Well today it's time to find out.

So, what is “User-Defined?"

The user defined variable allows you to "label" a visitor if they complete a certain action on your site, such as making a purchase or visiting a key page. These labels are useful because they last across multiple visits to your site.

These labels are often called Custom Segments (or Custom Segmentation). You can see the data from these Custom Segments in the User Defined report, which is the last report of the Visitors section in Google Analytics.

How do I add these “labels” to my website visitors?

Making use of the User-Defined report in Google Analytics requires a bit of extra coding help from your IT department or webmaster, but it’s often well worth the effort.

For example, let’s say that I want to add a label of “customers” to any visitor who reaches my shopping cart’s receipt page. In order to do this, I would add an additional line of code to the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) on my receipt page. It would then look something like this:

Notice the line in bold that includes _setVar. When this is present on a page within the Google Analytics Tracking Code, an additional cookie (called the __utmv cookie) gets set on a visitor’s computer, with its sole purpose being to identify the visitor by the label (or value) that you used in the code. If you take a look at the code example above, you will see that I used the term “customers,“ the label that I want to appear in the User Defined report.

Now, on their next visit to the site, they will be identified as a part of the “customers” segment in the User Defined report, allowing you to perform analysis on all visitors who have purchased something from your online store. Neat, huh?

Can I use _setVar when someone clicks on a link instead of visiting a page?

Yes - you can also use the pageTracker._setVar function when someone clicks on an important link on your site, or makes a key selection on an important form that you want visitors to fill out. For example, if you wanted to add a custom label to any visitor who clicks on your “Live Help” applet, you can ask your IT department or webmaster to add an “onClick” event, and give them the following line of code:

onClick="pageTracker._setVar('Needs Help');"

What will this look like in the end?

When all of your coding is complete, check the User Defined report after about a day or so and you should see something like this:

After the data has been collected by Google Analytics, you can interact with it just like you would with any other report. Click on the “Goal Conversion” tab directly above the table to see how many customers have reached key pages of your site, or use the dimensioning feature to see what sources of traffic were responsible for bringing these special visitors to your website!

Are there any other ways to use _setVar?

One neat usage of the _setVar function is to use it to exclude your own traffic from reports when using a dynamic IP address. For example, let’s say that you wanted to exclude your entire company’s traffic from appearing in reports, and your company uses dynamic IP addresses.

Because it would be nearly impossible to write a filter to exclude traffic from a dynamic IP address, you can create an HTML page that is not a part of your website and add Google Analytics Tracking Code with the call to _setVar and a label of “employees” (or something similar).

Next, you can ask each employee to visit that page from their browser of choice – this will drop a cookie on their computer, identifying them as “employees.” Finally, you can then apply a filter with the following specifications to your profile, and your internal traffic will be excluded:

Filter Type: Custom Filter >> Exclude
Filter Field: User Defined
Filter Pattern: employees
Case Sensitive: No

Some technical notes about Custom Segmentation:

As we just talked about, when a person visits a page calling the _setVar function, the __utmv cookie is set on their computer. This is a persistent, first-party cookie that has a lifetime of two years. This means that every time a user with a __utmv cookie returns to your site, the label assigned to the user will continue to identify them as such until they either delete the cookie or visit another page with another call to _setVar with a different label.
The purpose behind something like a User-Defined report - and Custom Segmentation in general - is that it is not designed to be updated very often. This label, for the most part, should be a permanent one for a visitor. You should only use _setVar on pages like a receipt page of a shopping cart, or an account registration “success” page for a visitor who becomes a member of your site. You shouldn’t use _setVar on your homepage, or use several different _setVar’s with different labels scattered across many pages of your website.
Google Analytics - at this time - only has the capacity to store one custom segment at any one time for one website. So if you are using multiple calls to _setVar on your site, Google Analytics can only store the latest value that a visitor runs into in the __utmv cookie. John Henson at LunaMetrics – a fellow Google Analytics Authorized Consultant - has created a custom version of the Google Analytics Tracking Code that can support multiple custom segment labels at any one time.
On the other hand, Google Analytics uses what they call the “first association” of the session for visitor session calculations. If you are using multiple calls to _setVar on your site, be aware that if a user runs into the first one, and then runs into the second one in the same visit, their Goal Conversion and Pages per Visit metrics would be attributed to the label of the first encounter with _setVar.
For page view calculations, Google Analytics uses the most recently defined value. So if a person runs into the second instance of _setVar on your site, all of their pageviews afterwards - including the current pageview - will be attributed to the second _setVar’s label, even though as we just learned in #4 above, visitor session information is attributed to the first encounter of _setVar.

A full, technical explanation of _setVar and the User-Defined Report can be found here.

Summary

The User Defined report in Google Analytics is a great place to start segmenting your traffic. With a little bit of help from your IT department, you can not only begin to collect awesome data, but you can also begin to gain advanced knowledge about what makes your VIP website visitors register, sign-up for your newsletter, or purchase something from your online store. This will definitely help you become that Analysis Ninja that Avinash Kaushik loves to talk about!

Written by Joe Teixeira of MoreVisibility, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant.

Google Analytics Blog in German

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:24:00 +0000

Today we're delighted to announce a new blog for our German speaking Google Analytics users. The German Conversion Room blog launched recently and is run by our colleagues in Europe. In addition to covering Google Analytics tips and advice, the new blog will also include posts about Website Optimizer and Google AdWords conversion tools such as Conversion Optimizer.

Check out the new blog today by visiting conversionroom-de.blogspot.com. You can sign up for the site feed to have weekly posts delivered directly to your inbox.

And don't forget we have other conversion focused blogs for our non US readers...

conversionroom.blogspot.com for our readers in the UK and Ireland
central-de-conversiones.blogspot.com is our Spanish conversion blog
analytics-fr.blogspot.com for our French speakers and
analytics-ja.blogspot.com in Japan

Posted by Evelyn O'Keeffe, Google Analytics Team

Google Analytics on your Mobile Phone

Sebastian Tonkin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:07:00 +0000

With recent launch of the Google Analytics Data Export API, Google Analytics data is starting to show up in some new places. One of the most exciting places is on your mobile phone.

In the past it was challenging to keep up with your performance data while on the go. Using the new API, a number of developers have created mobile solutions to tackle this challenge. Note, it still takes our system some time to process your data, so if you're checking today's data, proceed with caution.

For the Android OS:

Check out Mobile GA from Actual Metrics.

Mobile GA's date range comparisons

This app is great since it allows me to quickly identify what metrics are changing on my site.

I reached out to Mike and Kirk from Actual Metrics to get a sense of how difficult this application was to build. "The GA API was very easy to use, Mike mentioned, "it is extremely flexible and allows us to get the data we want. What may require multiple calls in other product APIs can be done with just one with the GA API, allowing for higher product performance. "

For the iPhone:

Analytics App by Michael D Jensen	The Google Analytics for iPhone App by Sergej Mueller	Ego App by Garrett Murray

Analytics App is great for accessing all your GA Data. The Google Analytics for iPhone app also has some great reporting. Finally, Ego App allows you to consolidate reporting from different services, such as FeedBurner and Twitter, all in one simple dashboard.

Note, these apps were developed by third parties, so if you encounter any bugs or issues, you should reach out to those developers directly.

That's it! Do you have a cool app you want to share? Post a comment and let us know!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

Seminars For Success July – Edmonton, Canada

Sebastian Tonkin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:10:00 +0000

Hello, Edmonton Canada! Home of the worlds largest shopping and entertainment center (West Edmonton Mall) and gateway to some of the North's most spectacular National Parks and our first Seminars for Success in province of Alberta!

Our Google Analytics Seminar Leader, Benjamin Mangold from Mangold Sengers is making a special trip from his home country of Australia to teach the Google Analytics Intro and Advanced session. These are great in person trainings and will jump start you in Google Analytics. Return from these trainings with a practical understanding of how to use these products for your business along with some great tips & best practices.. and maybe some pictures of Elk and Bighorn Sheep.

They're tooting the horns on how beneficial these courses are. Here's what a recent attendee said:

"Well worth it all, travel, money and the time spent at the seminar flew by. "
David Wentworth Barton Publishing, attendee Seminars for Success, June 2009, Miami, FL

Google Analytics – Introduction & User Training

Edmonton, Canada - Tuesday, July 7

Day one offers an introduction to Google Analytics and then some. Learn how to turn the sea of web analytics data into information that you can use to make the decisions that drive your bottom line. Day one topics include:

Introduction to Web Analytics
Common Interface Features
Dashboard Reports & Customization
Understanding Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content, Goals and Ecommerce
Motion Chart Visualization
Analytics Best Practices for Branding, Lead Generation & Ecommerce
And much, much more…

Google Analytics – Advanced Technical Implementation

Edmonton, Canada - Wednesday, July 8

The second day will show you how to install and configure the advanced features and capabilities of Google Analytics. We'll show you how to use every ounce of this tool with tips and tricks, technical aspects, and how to avoid common problems. Day two topics include:

Profiles and Strategies
Filters – Uses and Implementation
Goals & Funnels - Configuration & Setup
Ecommerce Implementations
Site Search, Event Tracking, Custom Reporting and Advanced Segmentation
And much, much more…

Seats are limited, so register today for the July seminars!

New Analytics Desktop Wallpapers

Sebastian Tonkin — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:48:00 +0000

Late last week we launched an updated version of the Google Analytics website. Some keen-eyed observers noticed that we updated our logo as well. This is consistent with a larger Google effort to update logos on all of our consumer and business products.

Consumer product logos now generally have the word Google followed by a lower case word in blue. While business products like Google Analytics are in upper case with everything following Google in gray. To celebrate the new look, we not only updated our website and blog, but one of our newest team members created some new desktop wallpapers in his 20% time. Thanks Leo.

If you're note sure how to add these to your desktop, check out this tutorial by eHow.

Traditional Blend	Download: 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 1280 x 800 1440 x 900 1680 x 1050 1920 x 1200 2560 x 1600
The Shiny	Download: 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 1280 x 800 1440 x 900 1680 x 1050 1920 x 1200 2560 x 1600
Organic	Download: 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 1280 x 800 1440 x 900 1680 x 1050 1920 x 1200 2560 x 1600

Posted by Brett Crosby and Leo Baghdassarian, Google Analytics Team

Google Analytics Gets a New Site

Sebastian Tonkin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:49:00 +0000

We've given the Google Analytics site a refresh! Drawing upon insights from conversations with the Google Analytics community -- both online and in person, and from looking carefully at our own Analytics reports, we've reorganized the site to do a better job of exposing the information you're looking for. And, we've added a dash of visual style in the process.

How did we go about deciding what needed to be changed? The vast majority of visitors come to the site simply to log in to their accounts. After filtering these visits from our analysis, we looked at conversion rates -- new account sign ups-- and what content people looked at. It was clear that much important content, for example relating to training and professional services, was too buried for people to find. Although some visitors used the search box, we were surprised to find relatively few searches for education and professional services. Our guess is that not enough people know about these services, so we decided to create new sections for this content and address site navigation to make it more intuitive.

So, what is the result? Here are a few highlights.

The new updated Product area groups key features to help new and prospective users understand how the parts work together and how Google Analytics fits into the larger ecosystem of Google offerings that includes AdWords and Website Optimizer.

Considerable resources -- both free and fee-based -- are available to organizations using Google Analytics. The Support section provides a single point of access to these resources ranging from online communities to professional services offered by Authorized Consultant companies. You can quickly search our expanding global network for an Authorized Consultant in your region that specializes in the areas you'd like help with, whether that be installation assistance, consulting, customized training, or Urchin Software.

The Education section outlines ongoing opportunities to learn more about how to use Google Analytics more effectively. If you're an individual looking to develop skills for your career or a manager looking for cost effective ways to train your staff, you'll find the latest information you need on the Google Analytics IQ online course and test, Seminars for Success, and helpful videos.

Of course, the site won't be static. While we don't want to fall into the trap of trying to test everything, you may notice subtle site changes going forward as we use Website Optimizer to inform ongoing iterative updates.

We hope you like the new site and find it useful. Feel free to post a comment and let us know what you think. We'll share what we learn going forward. We're going to be working on the blog design and resources as well over the next couple of weeks.

Posted by Brett Crosby, Google Analytics Team

Import your Google Analytics Goals into AdWords

Sebastian Tonkin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:26:00 +0000

Last month we published a post showing how you can setup Goals in Google Analytics. Today you can now import your Google Analytics Goals and Transactions into your AdWords account to use as conversion actions. This lets you track campaign ROI and optimize your account for conversions directly inside the AdWords interface.

In the past, you needed to install a separate tracking code to make use of this feature (called AdWords Conversion Tracking). Today all you need is a Google Analytics account and a Goal that receives traffic from AdWords.

One of the benefits of importing your Google Analytics Goals and Transactions into AdWords is that you can use them with the Conversion Optimizer, an AdWords CPA bidding tool that has been shown to help advertisers get more conversions from AdWords. Conversion Optimizer makes it a lot easier to manage your AdWords bidding and maximize results.

For more information including step-by-step instructions on how to import your Goals, visit the Inside AdWords Blog.

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

Bagging the Conversion Elephant

Sebastian Tonkin — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:18:00 +0000

In reading an Occam’s Razor blog post from earlier this year, “Aggregation of Marginal Gains: Recession Busting Analytics!," I noted that Avinash is discussing exactly the same experience we at FutureNow underwent. Ten years ago, low hanging fruit in the conversion improvement space meant high traffic, high impact changes from fixing obviously-wrong calls to action: bad linking, non-obvious next steps, poor UI (user interface).

In fact, for several years conversion improvement was all about UI. Remember that? The theory was (mostly from the UI people, of course), that if you just improved the UI then conversion would follow. What we found out was that if you had a weak UI then of course fixing it would help... but only so far. When it worked you got big fireworks-busting improvements, but only at a singular point in the sales process.

A few years after that it was analytics. If you simply measure everything, then (wave hands here, sprinkle magical pixie dust) you’ll “just know” what to do to improve. If you want to improve more well then just “measure more” — get more analytics apps installed. Or buy more expensive ones.

In the last year or so, the buzz word technique seems to be testing. If you just test everything then somewhere, somehow you’ll know what helps conversion. And when I say “everything”, I mean “EVERYTHING.” Testing is great — in fact, I wrote a best-selling book on this very topic, "Always Be Testing", centered specifically on Google Website Optimizer — but if there’s a bee on your grandmother’s nose, do you honestly have to do a test to determine whether to swat it away? Yet, some companies out there imply to clients they should freeze like a deer caught in the headlights unless and until they have a test to back up every decision made. And if you don’t have enough traffic for the test to be valid just drive more traffic, any traffic, even if precision comes at the cost of accuracy. It's lunacy. No thanks, m’am, that bee on Granny gets swatted and I don’t need 95% statistical confidence to make that decision.

Each time the industry thinks it’s got the elephant in its sights, that five-ton peanut-eater slips away. I think it’s because everyone keeps chasing technology as the solution to pachyderm-sized conversion improvement. If you install the right mix of digital toys, then whamo you’re sure to be the next market leader in your space. Again with the pixie dust.

But it just doesn’t work that way. What we’ve learned is that the big wins come from a long series of small wins, accumulated over time. And small wins come from experienced insight and hard work. And it has to be the type of hard work that a company is willing and able to perform. Not pie-in-the-sky goals without any mechanism for implementing.

I'd recommend focusing less on "big projects" and more on iteration. At FutureNow we did just that, re-tooling our entire business model around this "OnTarget" concept, letting clients decide how many resources they have to devote to improvement in a current cycle, and delivering experienced recommendations specifically for that cycle, and using analytics tools to measure the improvement and testing tools to back up any conclusions. "Rinse and repeat". How do you eat the conversion elephant? One small bite at a time. Exactly what Avinash was speaking about.

Posted by John Quarto-vonTivadar of FutureNow, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

Track Yahoo! Search Marketing Campaigns and More with Urchin 6.6

Sebastian Tonkin — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:00:00 +0000

On Monday June 8, we released Urchin 6.6, a significant upgrade to our "run-it-yourself" web analytics package. This release brings some serious enterprise-level heft to the table, and also advances Urchin's marketing-analysis capabilities in a big way.

New Search Marketing Reports and Tools

Chief among Urchin's new report-side features is the Performance Comparison report. Finally you can compare the performance of your Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) campaigns side-by-side... Yes, this means you can tap into the Yahoo! API and import your YSM campaigns automatically!

With Urchin 6.6, you can easily compare campaigns, keywords, etc., from different search engines.

There's more. Here's a breakdown of the new CPC-management tools and reports in Urchin 6.6:

YSM integration: Download your YSM campaign data via the Yahoo API.
Deep links into AdWords: Provide your login credentials and Urchin lets you jump directly from CPC reports to related management screens in your AdWords account.
Budget Alerts: If your AdWords campaigns are in danger of exhausting available funds, Urchin will tell you.
Keyword Generation Tool: Add keywords to your AdWords campaigns directly from Urchin.
Copy Campaign Tool: Duplicate existing CPC campaigns (for example, YSM campaigns) as new AdWords campaigns.
Tag Manager: Automates your keyword destination-URL building, a big timesaver.
New reports: Time on Site, Performance Comparison, CPC Structure, and more!

Urchin's new Keyword Generator Tool helps you identify promising keywords and add them to your AdWords campaign, all within Urchin!

It doesn't stop here. We've also taken a close look at how Urchin plays with other other systems in your organization. Which brings us to...

New Enterprise/IT Capabilities

Urchin has long been appreciated by web-hosting companies and enterprises for robust performance and integration flexibility. Urchin 6.6 adds key features that make it even better.

LDAP integration: Use your existing corporate authentication with Urchin, including LDAP, MSAD, etc.
Data API: Pull your Urchin report data into a CRM tool or any other system. (See the Urchin Data API documentation.)
Rollup Report: A new Urchin "home" page shows each user a list of all profiles to which they have access, with summary metrics for each profile.
Process Control: Kill a running Urchin log-processing job gracefully, without corrupting the database.
Urchin 5 to Urchin 6 Migration Utility: Haven't upgraded from Urchin 5 yet? Our new data-migration utility is much faster and less prone to errors.

Urchin's new process control functions allow you to cancel jobs without worry.

Urchin 6.6 is available now as a full-featured 30-day demo from our download servers and licenses can be purchased from any of our Authorized Consultants for US$2995. Check it out!

Posted by Scott Crosby, Urchin Team

Share your Web Analytics Story

Sebastian Tonkin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:11:00 +0000

How do you use web analytics? Do you share data as part of a regular planning meeting? Do you log in once in awhile just to see how things are going?

We want to know! We're gathering information to help prioritize new features and improve Google Analytics and we need your help. If you've used web analytics data to make decisions inside your business or organization, get in touch and tell us how. Email us at gacasestudies@google.com.

We'll republish the most interesting stories here on the blog and we'll even send you a free Google Analytics tee-shirt if your story gets published. We're ready and waiting, so drop us a line!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Team

Bing to be Integrated into Search Engine Reports

Sebastian Tonkin — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:57:00 +0000

Recently Microsoft released a new search engine called Bing, which has begun sending traffic to websites with Google Analytics installed. Bing currently shows up as a referring site in the Traffic Sources reports. We are actively working on an update that will include Bing under the default list of search engines in Google Analytics.

If you absolutely can't wait for the upgrade, you can add the following line to your Google Analytics tracking code as a temporary solution. Note, this workaround is recommended for advanced users only. For more information on adding custom configurations to the Google Analytics tracking code, read this article.

pageTracker._addOrganic("bing", "q");

Stay tuned for updates.

Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

Analytics Blog Now in Spanish

Sebastian Tonkin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:34:00 +0000

We're very happy to announce the recent launch of Central de Conversiones, a new Spanish-language blog covering Google's measurement tools including Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, Insights for Search, AdPlanner and others.

Both Googlers and GAACs from Spanish speaking countries such as Argentina, Mexico and Spain will be sharing basic tips and advanced web analytics techniques trying to help decision makers integrate data from these tools into their business strategies.

Central de Conversiones will translate important posts from this blog but will also create content and share case studies specific to the Spanish Speaking markets. We're sure that you will find it a very useful tool.

¡Esperamos lo disfruten!

Posted by Enrique Quevedo, Google Analytics Team

Event Tracking Now Available in All Accounts

Sebastian Tonkin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:20:00 +0000

Event Tracking is a feature of Google Analytics that allows you to track visitor actions that don't correspond directly to pageviews. It's a great fit for tracking things like:

Downloads of a PDF or file
Interaction with dynamic, AJAX sites
Interaction with Adobe Flash objects, embedded videos and other media

Unlike virtual pageviews, Event Tracking will not alter your pageview count. This makes it the preferred method for tracking a variety of visitor actions.

We're happy to announce that earlier today Event Tracking became available by default in all Google Analytics accounts. To access the new reports, just navigate to the Content Section of the Google Analytics interface and select the option labeled "Event Tracking."

Screenshot of Event Tracking reports

In future posts, we'll explain more about some of the ways you can put Event Tracking to good use. For now, here are some great resources to get you started:

How to send Events to Google Analytics (Code site)
Event Tracking Overview/Tutorial (Analytics Talk)
Tracking Flash Videos with Event Tracking (Inside RIA)

Note, your reports will not show data until you start sending events. You can use the above resources to find about more about how to send events to Google Analytics.

We hope you enjoy the feature. Leave a comment and let us know what you think!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

Seminars For Success – Sydney, Miami, San Diego, Dallas and Washington DC

Sebastian Tonkin — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 21:05:00 +0000

We are offering Seminars in 4 cities this month. That's right.. down under in Sydney, Australia and then one on each coast (Miami and San Diego) and north/south (Dallas and Washington DC) just to balance it out.

These are great in person trainings and will jump start you in Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer (San Diego and Dallas only). Return from these trainings with a practical understanding of how to use these products for your business along with some great tips & best practices... oh and if you're lucky, a nice tan.

Here's a quote from one of our past attendees:

I was really impressed that the focus of 2 day course was less to do with number crunching and much more to do with the relationships between the site and our users. The 2 day course was really well paced and full of 'light-bulb' moments. As a result of the training I've been able to go back and make quick/simple changes to our Analytics set up so that our business users can access the kind of custom reporting that they need. The course provided insights that have helped me communicate with our 3rd Party (SEO/SEM) Agencies so that we have a united view/strategy on how we want to connect all of our metrics. This has helped inform how we will interact with our users in the future. It's great to see our website as a living breathing entity...
....I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to get their hands dirty :)
Claire Spencer, Origin Energy

Google Analytics – Introduction & User Training

Sydney, Australia - Thursday, June 4
Miami - Wednesday, June 10
San Diego - Wednesday, June 10
Dallas - Wednesday, June 17
Washington DC - Thursday, June 25

Introduction to Web Analytics
Common Interface Features
Dashboard Reports & Customization
Understanding Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content, Goals and Ecommerce
Motion Chart Visualization
Analytics Best Practices for Branding, Lead Generation & Ecommerce
And much, much more…

Google Analytics – Advanced Technical Implementation

Sydney, Australia - Friday, June 5
Miami – Thursday, June 11
San Diego - Thursday, June 11
Dallas - Thursday, June 18
Washington DC - Friday, June 26

Profiles and Strategies
Filters – Uses and Implementation
Goals & Funnels - Configuration & Setup
Ecommerce Implementations
Site Search, Event Tracking, Custom Reporting and Advanced Segmentation
And much, much more…

Landing Page Testing with Google Website Optimizer

San Diego - Friday, June 12
Dallas - Friday, June 19

Learn how to make the most of the visitors to your site with landing page testing and get hands-on experience in designing, setting up, running, and analyzing A/B and multivariate tests with Google Website Optimizer. The experts will show you how to improve your users’ experience and continually increase your conversion rates through testing. The Website Optimizer Seminar includes:

An overview of testing and Website Optimizer
How to identify problematic pages and estimate sample sizes
Loads of testing best practices drawn from real tests and case studies
Hands-on lab experience in setting up, configuring, & launching both A/B and Multivariate tests
How to interpret the data and run follow up experiments

Seats are limited, so register today for the June seminars!

Posted by Eva Woo, Google Analytics Team

Announcing the new Google Local Business Center Dashboard

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:00:00 +0000

As a Google Analytics user, chances are you know the value of good data on traffic to your website. More data means you can make better-informed decisions about how to drive traffic to your site and to your brick-and-mortar locations. But your website is just a part of your entire web presence.

Users of Google Maps and Google Search, for example, may also be interacting with your local listing on Google. While Google Analytics is fantastic for measuring traffic to your site, there has previously been no way to measure how customers interact with other elements of your web presence. That is, until today. The Google Maps team has just launched a new dashboard in its free Local Business Center (www.google.com/lbc) that will provide you with information on how users interact with your local listing on Google Maps and Google Search.

This new dashboard provides detailed metrics on traffic to local listings on Google Maps -- helping you understand, for example, how many times your listing appears in Google.com or Google Maps local search results, what search queries lead users to your listing, and what zip codes customers come from when they search for directions to your location. This is the first time this kind of data has ever been made available to business owners, and we think you'll find it highly useful.

If you're interested in learning more, head over to the Official Google Blog for a more-detailed overview or the Lat Long blog for a walk-through of the dashboard's features.

Posted by Laura Melahn, Google Maps Team

Back to Basics: Setting up Google Analytics on your Blog

Sebastian Tonkin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:01:00 +0000

Today's post covers how to install Google Analytics on the Blogger and WordPress blogging platforms. Adding analytics to your blog can tell you things like:

Which referring sites send you the best traffic
Which visitors are most likely to subscribe to your email list
Which keywords have the highest engagement
Which articles have the lowest bounce rate
Which articles monetize best using AdSense
and much more.

For more information about how web analytics can be useful for bloggers, check out Avinash Kaushik's post on useful goals for blogs.

Installing Google Analytics on Blogger

Installing Google Analytics on Blogger is very easy. Here are the basic steps:

Sign up for a Google Analytics account
Add the GA tracking code to your Blogger template
Wait 24 hours and login to Google Analytics to start analyzing your data

For a detailed explanation of how to complete a successful installation, read this tutorial created by eblogstemplates.

Installing Google Analytics on WordPress

You can use the same basic steps above to install Google Analytics on a WordPress blog. The team at WordPress has produced this terrific step by step video explaining this process. A huge thanks to Michael Pick for his hard work in creating this. Note, you can also use a plugin like the Analyticator plugin we described last week to install Analytics on your WordPress blog.

To view the video in a larger size, visit wordpress.tv. For more videos on Google Analytics, visit the Google Analytics YouTube Channel.

Leave a Comment

That's it for now. Still having trouble? Visit the help forum or leave a comment and let us know where you're stuck. Have you used analytics for your blog? Tell us about it!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

Top Ten Myths About Google Analytics

Sebastian Tonkin — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:39:00 +0000

We've noticed some misconceptions about Google Analytics floating around, and we thought we'd take a shot at correcting the most common ones. Without further ado, here they are, the top ten myths about Google Analytics debunked.

MYTH 1: "You get what you pay for." Google Analytics is free, which means the system is down a lot.

Google Analytics makes use of the same network of secure and reliable data centers used to power Google.com, making downtime an extremely rare occurrence. We have a large team focused exclusively on keeping your data safe and accessible, and benefit from multiple redundancies in our infrastructure around the globe (this makes us fast as well).

We even rely on Google Analytics for our own mission-critical products such as AdWords, which see huge volumes of traffic every day. If you're still having doubts, we'd encourage you to talk to some users and ask them how their experience has been with uptime.

MYTH 2: Google Analytics is basic and doesn't have any "advanced" features or metrics

Ack, this one is a tough one to swallow! A more frequent complaint is actually that Google Analytics has too much data. The product includes over 90 standard reports with more than 125 metrics and dimensions covering everything from visits to internal site search queries.

Custom reports and user-defined variables allow you to create your own metrics and reports where the standard ones don't meet your needs. With Pivoting, Advanced Segmentation, Secondary Dimensions, Event Tracking and the ability to share customizations, Google Analytics reports are more powerful than ever.

Google Analytics may look "basic," on the surface, but it can do a lot more than you think! If you have complex needs try talking to a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant or diving into the documentation on the Google Code Site.

More Info (Feature List, Custom Reports, Advanced Segmentation, Analytics API)

MYTH 3: Google Analytics only supports third-party cookies

False! Google Analytics has always used first-party, not third-party cookies. First-party cookies are important because they allow Google Analytics to track repeat visitors, so you can see which keyword, referring site, etc is responsible for bringing buyers even when it takes multiple visits for them to convert.

MYTH 4: Google Analytics is not really accurate

If you've spent time doing web analytics work, you'll know the sinking feeling that comes when two sets of numbers don't match. If you're experiencing a data discrepancy, don't panic. There are many others in the same boat.

Google Analytics uses JavaScript tags to collect data. This industry-standard method yields reliable trends and a high degree of precision, but it's not perfect. Most of the time, if you are noticing data discrepancies greater than 10%, it's due to an installation issue. Common problems include JavaScript errors, redirects, untagged pages and slow client-side load times.

For tips on how to sensibly approach data reconciliation, check out this post by Avinash Kaushik, Google's Analytics Evangelist, or this whitepaper on accuracy in Google Analytics. You can also talk to an expert.

All web analytics tools face the same technical limitations posed by JavaScript tags, so if another vendor claims their tool is more accurate, ask for some evidence.

More Info (Web Analytics Data Reconciliation Checklist, Whitepaper)

MYTH 5: It's not possible to export your data from Google Analytics

Not true! You have two options for exporting data. Use the "export" button at the top of each report to export the current view in PDF or XML (up to 500 rows). Or, use the new Analytics Export API to extract large amounts of data in any format you like. Also, if you want to share data with a colleague, you can schedule reports to be delivered directly to their email inbox, or even send regular updates to your own email address.

More Info (How to Export your Data, Analytics API)

MYTH 6: With Google Analytics you can't control your data

You have three options for data sharing in Google Analytics. You can change these options at any time from inside your Analytics account.

do not share your data
share your data with Google to improve its products
share your data anonymously for benchmarking

No matter which option you choose, your data is protected by several layers of defense:

Dedicated security and infrastructure teams
Multiple redundancies to prevent data loss
Network redundancies to keep data accessible
Advanced security, firewalling and routing to keep data secure
Restricted access and principle of least privilege for personnel

If you opt-out of data sharing, your data will remain within Google Analytics and will not be shared with other products or services. If you decide to share your data with Google, it will be used to improve those products and services. Lastly, if you decide to share your data anonymously with others, it will be blended with other data to support the Google Analytics benchmarking feature. For more information on these options and what they mean, refer to the Google Analytics data sharing FAQ.

If you're still concerned, Google also offers a software product called Urchin (www.urchin.com) that you can run locally.

More Info (Data Sharing FAQ, Google Privacy Policy)

MYTH 7: There is no professional support for Google Analytics

Contrar! We flipped the model. Instead of providing an expensive analytics product with a one-size-fits-all professional services plan, we provide a free product and let you purchase the professional services that fit your needs.

There are several ways to get support: email support, help forums, the help center, and a network of Authorized Consultants. Authorized Consultants speak your language, accept your currency and often share your timezone. More than 80 companies across the globe provide a full range of installation and analysis support for Google Analytics. Some examples of things they can help you with are:

Validate and troubleshoot your installation
Integrate your analytics data with other data sources or CRM
Optimize your marketing efforts
Train your staff on how to use Analytics
Respond to support tickets, phone calls and provide on-site consulting

To find out more, give one or two of them a call. Our Authorized Consultants are hand-picked and are the best in the business.

More Info (Google Analytics Authorized Consultants)

MYTH 8: Google Analytics does not support A/B or multivariate testing and isn't well-integrated with other tools

Google offers a full range of marketing products including a free testing tool called Google Website Optimizer. You can use it to test different page elements and find out which ones yield the highest conversion rate and ROI. You can also use Google Analytics in conjunction with Website Optimizer to create an optimization plan for your site.

Google Analytics is also integrated with many of Google's other business products including AdWords, AdSense, and AdPlanner. It is also widely supported by third party tools ranging from content management systems, to email suites, to call center applications. In addition, you'll find many products that are complementary to Google Analytics including DoubleClick, TVAds, Webmaster Tools, Google Trends, Insights for Search, Feedburner, and more.

More Info (Google Website Optimizer, GWO Blog)

MYTH 9: You can't segment data in Google Analytics

In the fall of 2008, Google Analytics released three new Enterprise Features: Advanced Segmentation, Custom Reports and Motion Charts. Advanced Segmentation lets you segment visits by dozens of metrics and dimensions such as geographic location, time on site, referral site and much much more. You can create segments on the fly and apply them to virtually all the standard reports in Google Analytics as well as custom reports.

More Info (In Depth Look at Advanced Segments, Video)

MYTH 10: You have to spend a lot of money to get "real" web analytics

Getting a return from your Analytics data does take an investment. The most important investment to start with is making sure you or someone at your organization has the expertise and time to put your data to use. If at that point you still feel you need to pay more for a more complicated tool, that's OK, but remember that every dollar you spend on a tool takes away from money you could be spending on actually getting results, i.e. hiring or contracting a talented analyst (see the 90/10 Rule).

The question sometimes comes up, "if Google Analytics is free, what's in it for Google?" Google benefits from Google Analytics in two ways. First, if webmasters build better sites, it helps us connect searchers with the information they need faster. Second, if advertisers use Google Analytics, they are able to see their advertising ROI, which helps us demonstrate the value of Google AdWords. Both aspects have helped create a strong business case for Google Analytics over the years.

Google Analytics is getting more powerful with each new update, and you may be surprised by what it can do. Find out more by attending an Analytics Seminar for Success or talking to an Authorized Consultant in your area. If you're an AdWords advertiser, you can also speak with your Customer Service Representative.

More Info (90/10 Rule, Google Analytics Authorized Consultants, Seminars for Success)

Leave a comment

That's it for the top 10 myths. Still not convinced? Leave a comment and let us know!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

Share Your Google Analytics Data With Everyone

Sebastian Tonkin — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:25:00 +0000

Almost everyone uses Google Analytics to calculate overall site traffic as a way to measure the value of their website.

Many users are clamoring for a simpler way to share their Analytics traffic data with their external stakeholders. These stakeholders, such as investors and advertisers, typically use data reported by other services to evaluate the performance of a company. Many times these estimates are significantly different than that from Google Analytics.

One way to share your Analytics data with everyone is to use our recent integration with Google Ad Planner. With this, you can replace Ad Planner traffic estimates with actual data collected by Google Analytics.

Now you can use the Google Analytics Data Export API to create your own integrations to share Google Analytics data with everyone. For example, if you use WordPress blogging software, you can display Google Analytics traffic data directly on your website using the new Analyticator plugin by Sprial Web Consulting.

Ronald Heft explains, "this plugin allows WordPress users to easily configure tracking and reporting of Google Analytics data without having to manually edit their WordPress template files. The plugin uses the new Google Analytics API to retrieve the unique visitor information and display it directly on your blog."

Example of the Analyticator plugin display

To use the plugin, download it from the WordPress plugin Website or just search for, "analyticator" in the "Add a New Plugin" section of the WordPress Administration page. According to Heft, Sprial plans to surface more Google Analytics API data, such as a summary dashboard of website statistics and a widget to display the most popular pages.

We're looking forward to watching the evolution of this plugin and excited to see the applications developers are building with the Google Analytics Data Export API.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, The Google Analytics API Team

Analytics Tracking for YouTube Brand Channels

Sebastian Tonkin — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:27:00 +0000

Today we're excited to announce a new feature in Google Analytics, tracking for YouTube brand channels. YouTube brand channels allow partners and advertisers to have a hub of content on YouTube, where they can collect videos, publish playlists, and get YouTube users deeply engaged with their brand. Now brand channel owners can get fully enabled Google Analytics reporting on their channel as if it were their own site.

For more information, check out the newly launched YouTube Biz Blog.

Posted by Beth Liebert, Google Analytics Team

How to Setup Goals in Google Analytics

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:01:00 +0000

In this post, we'll explain what Goals are in Google Analytics, why they're useful, and how to set them up. Let us make two assumptions before we start. First, you know the rules of basketball, and second, you are a Lakers fan (or at least you know who the Lakers are).

Note that if you run an ecommerce site, Google Analytics has additional features to help you track purchases. For more information on this, check out how to configure ecommerce tracking.

Understanding Goals in Google Analytics

Goals (with a capital G) are a way to measure business objectives for your website in Google Analytics. Goals must correspond to a measurable action performed by your website's visitors, for example, a visit to a "thank you" page. This combination of a business objective and a measurable action make up a Goal. Here are some common examples.

Business Objective	Visitor Action	Success Measure
Generate Leads	Complete Contact Form	form_submitted.html
Drive Loyalty	Sign up for Newsletter	subscription_confirmed.html
Drive Revenue	Complete a Purchase	thankyou.html
Raise Awareness	Whitepaper Download	download_redirect.html

To use a real world example, the Lakers objective is to win games, and the measurable action is scoring baskets. Keeping this goal in mind helps the team focus on winning and not worry about things that don't matter -- like the number of times the team is photographed or their average height. Goals serve this same purpose in Google Analytics.

Understanding the Goal Funnel

Usually the visitor action that's associated with a goal involves multiple steps. Together these steps make up the Goal Funnel, or the sequence of steps that lead up to the successful completion of a Goal. Like the Goal itself, each of these steps must correspond to a measurable action, such as a pageview of a specific page.

Here's a real world example. Let's assume that Phil Jackson, the Lakers head coach, wants to score more baskets using a specific play. The path for that play is as follows: Kobe Bryant passes the ball to Derek Fisher, Derek Fisher passed the ball to Pau Gasol, and then Pau Gasol scores.

In this example, the Goal is scoring a basket and the Goal Funnel is Kobe > Derek > Pau. The ball moves from player to player until either Pau scores (Goal completed) or they lose the ball (Goal abandoned).

Now pretend the Lakers players are pages on a website and the ball is the website visitor. From now on we will look at the players as the following:

Kobe Bryant: kobe-bryant.html
Derek Fisher: derek-fisher.html
Pau Gasol: pau-gasol.html
Point: point.html

How to set up a Goal and Funnel:

Step 1) Define your Goal Funnel

Navigate to your website, and move through through the steps required to complete your Goal. As you navigate, note down the URLs for each page in the sequence (or take screenshots).

If the sequence includes only one step (the Goal) than you don't need to define a funnel at all. If the sequence includes events other than pageviews (such as clicks), you will need to use virtual pageviews or another method beyond the scope of this tutorial.

In our Lakers example, the funnel is defined as:

Another example might be:

start_registration.html
enter_shipping_info.html
enter_subscriber_preferences.html
finalize_registration.html
thank_you.html

Step 2) Configure Goal Settings for Each Profile

Log in to your Google Analytics account and then click "Edit" beside your profile. You will need to configure goals for each profile you want them to show up in.

Go to Conversion Goals and Funnel and click "Edit"

Set "Active Goal" to "On"

Set "Match Type" to to either "Exact Match," "Head Match," or "Regular Expression Match." In our example, we chose "Exact Match," because there is only one exact URL for our Goal page "point.html."

If you have multiple Goal pages, or multiple pages for one of the steps leading up to the goal, you might need to use a different match type. For more information about the difference between Head, Exact, and Regular Expression match, visit this Help Center article.

If your Goal has a specific dollar value, be sure to enter it under "Goal Value". You may need to look at your financial data to determine how much a Goal completion is worth to you.

Step 3) Define Your Goal Funnel

Enter the URL and a meaningful name for each step in your funnel. In our example the Goal URL is "/point.html" and the name we gave it is "Point." If you only have one step (the Goal) than you don't need to complete this section.

Step 4) Wait a Few Days and Analyze your Goal Performance

Your Goals will not work backwards, so you will need to wait for Goal data to appear in your reports. Once you have data to analyze, navigate to the Goals section and open the Funnel Visualization Report.

Now we can analyze the entire goal funnel or just an individual page.

This report shows

356 visits entering the funnel (at kobe-bryant.html)
88 visits in which the person moved from "kobe-bryant.html" to the next step in the funnel "derek-fisher.html"
55 visits that completed the entire funnel and reached the Goal

Looking across the entire Funnel, it looks like Kobe Bryant is not doing a great job getting the ball to Derek Fisher, so the team should consider working on that part of the play. Derek's doing a great job getting the ball to Pau, so he'll get some more playing time. Overall, the play leads to a basket 15% of the time, which is below the average for the team, so Phil might consider scrapping this play for a new one (site redesign anyone?).

Summary

So there you have it. Goals and Funnels in Google Analytics let you see how well your website is living up to your business objectives. They also help you identify specific areas of your website to improve on. Overall, they're a crucial element in a successful web strategy.

Before implementing Google Analytics Goals, identify what your business objectives are for your website, and what visitor actions they correspond to.
Identify the steps visitors must go through to complete the desired action, and note down the specific pages that make up those steps.
Use this information to configure Goals and Funnels.
Take action on the data. Make simple design changes or try using Website Optimizer to make improvements.

Other Resources

Still have questions? Get help at the Google Analytics help forum. Or, leave a comment and let us know how you use goals.

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team, and Allaedin Ezzedin of E-Nor, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

Lollapalooza Tracks Social Media Campaigns with Google Analytics

Sebastian Tonkin — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:13:00 +0000

Let’s face it: Social media is here to stay, and day by day it continues to encroach on nearly every aspect of our online lives. But to publishers, promoters, advertisers and site owners, there’s one essential question left hanging in the air long after the race to join the social media crowd: “Is it working?”

This year’s Lollapalooza Music Festival is using Event Tracking and Google Analytics to find out.

Social Media Applications

There may not be a more perfect application of social media than promoting a music festival, and C3 Presents, (the folks behind Lollapalooza) came up with some good ways to capitalize. This year’s lineup page alone features a Facebook Connect application to maintain and share personal lineups, MySpace blog, bulletin and site postings, Twitter updates and email sharing, and AddThis social bookmarking.
“You don’t find anyone who thinks social media is a bad idea, but the questions on our minds are, ‘what is this doing for our fans and what kind of return are we getting back on this investment?’” says Michael Feferman of C3 Presents.

Questions to Answer

As with any successful web analytics strategy, this one started out by posing the questions that Google Analytics should answer. Specifically:

Who’s using these sharing and social media outlets? Are they benefiting?
Which ones are being used the most and what are their applications?
Does social media make a visitor more likely to buy a ticket?
Are we driving more traffic to our site as a result? Are we driving more sales and revenue?

WebShare, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, was brought in to help implement and configure Google Analytics to help answer these questions. Measuring the impact of social media for Lollapalooza has two sides:

The impact on those who use social media applications while on the site
The impact of those who arrive at the site as a result of social media

The Implementation

Event Tracking and Campaign Tagging were employed in order to provide the data required to answer these questions.

Event Tracking

While a user is on the site, events “fire” as the visitor interacts with the various social media applications. Lollapalooza tracks when sharing applications are clicked, when users log into Facebook accounts via Facebook Connect and perform various actions, and when visitors register or log into their Lollapalooza accounts.

*Actual values have been modified

Drilling down into the event categories, actions and labels reveals even more about user behavior, and coupled with the secondary dimensions and pivot tables that were recently announced, we can answer some very detailed questions, like:

How much revenue and how many transactions resulted from visitors in Chicago that used Facebook Connect and found the site via the keyword “lollapalooza 2009”?

*Actual values have been modified

Campaign Tagging

In order to track visitors arriving at the site as a result of social media, links that are generated and shared are tagged with unique values to define campaign parameters. The reports and segmentation options of Analytics then help us understand these visitors and their value in terms of Goal and Ecommerce conversions.

When visitors share via Twitter, for example, a pre-populated message with a bit.ly compressed link is used that includes Google Analytics campaign tag parameters:

When followers of this user click on the link, Google Analytics attributes the visit to a source of “twitter” and a medium of “share”. This data is then available in our reports, and we can answer questions like:

What kind of revenue and ticket sales resulted from Twitter sharing yesterday?

*Actual values have been modified

The Results

The data continues to roll in, but some impressive insights have been gained so far:

Over 2/3 of the traffic referred from Facebook, MySpace and Twitter is a result of sharing applications and Lollapalooza’s messaging to its fans on those platforms.
Users of the social media applications on Lollapalooza.com spend twice as much as users that don’t.
“Fan Engagement” metrics such as time on site, bounce rate, page views per visit and interaction have seen significant boosts across the board as a result of social media applications.

More details and findings are available on C3's digital marketing blog.

“This kind of data is fantastic,” says Michael. “Not only does it help us give our fans what they want, it let’s us know how they respond to it and tells us that these efforts are worth it.”

Other Resources

To learn more about the reports, configurations and features highlighted in this post, take a look at the following resources:

Event Tracking with Google Analytics
Campaign Tagging and tracking traffic sources
Secondary Dimensions and Pivot Tables

Posted by David Booth of WebShare, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

Temporary System Error this Morning – Now Resolved

Sebastian Tonkin — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:36:00 +0000

For approximately one hour today starting at 7:48 am Pacific Time, Google had an error in routing traffic that prevented Google Analytics from collecting a small amount of data for some web properties.

On average, this will appear as roughly a 1% decrease in traffic for Thursday, May 14. The exact amount may be more or less depending on the concentration of traffic your site experienced during this one hour time period.

On behalf of our team, we're very sorry for the inconvenience this error has caused. For additional information on the error, see the Official Google Blog.

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

The World’s Best Advanced Segment Contest

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:30:00 +0000

Last week we announced some new features in Analytics including pivoting, secondary dimensions and the option to share customizations (like Advanced Segments). These features will be rolling out to everyone over the next few weeks. In anticipation of the release, we'd like to announce a contest for the coolest, most useful Advanced Segments. For example, one of the engineers from Google's mobile team created a segment for iPhone users that's now available to everyone.

The winning segment should be applicable to a wide audience and have a clear use case. If you can explain how you've used the segment to increase your website ROI, that's even better.

The winner will receive a Google Analytics teeshirt, stickers, a GAIQ voucher and a shower of praise on the blog. We'll even email your boss to tell him or her about your Google Analytics mastery. Once the new features launch for everyone, we'll follow up with a request for URLs, so get your segments ready today!

Check out this post for more information on how to configure Advanced Segments.

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

How to Use Ecommerce Tracking in Google Analytics

Sebastian Tonkin — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:48:00 +0000

Last year, Justin Cutroni of EpikOne published a four-part tutorial on how to use Ecommerce Tracking in Google Analytics. We've seen a lot of interest in this topic, so we thought we'd republish the first part of the series here on the Analytics blog.

Ecommerce Tracking Part 1: How it Works

This post is the first in a series of e-commerce transaction tracking with Google Analytics. Why is e-commerce tracking important? Well, transaction data is a vital piece of information when analyzing online business performance.

Sure, it’s great to measure things like conversion rate, but revenue is much more tangible to many business owners. Having the e-commerce data in your web analytics application makes it easier to perform analysis. Do you need to set up e-commerce tracking? No, but it sure helps. :)

The Big Pictures

E-commerce tracking is based on the same principal as standard pageview tracking. JavaScript code sends the data to a Google Analytic servers by requesting an invisible gif file. The big difference is that e-commerce data is sent rather than pageview data.

But how does Google Analytics get the e-commerce data? That’s the tricky part. You, the site owner, must create some type of code that inserts the transaction data into the GA JavaScript. Sounds tricky, huh? Well, its not that bad.

Step by Step: How it Works

Let’s break it down and walk through what actually happens.

The visitor submits their transaction to your server.
Your server receives the transaction data and processes the transaction. This may include a number of steps at the server level, such as sending a confirmation email, checking a credit card number, etc.
After processing the transaction the server prepares to send the receipt page back to the visitor. While preparing the receipt page your server must extract some the transaction data and insert it into the Google Analytics JavaScript. This is the code that you must create.
The receipt page is sent to the visitor’s browser.
While the receipt page renders in the visitor’s browser the e-commerce data is sent to Google Analytics via special GA JavaScript.
Here’s a basic diagram of the process. Again, the biggest challenge during implementation is adding code to your web server that inserts the transaction data, in the appropriate format, into the receipt page. I’ll cover the setup in part 2 of this series.

What Data can be Tracked?

Google Analytics collect two types of e-commerce data: transaction data and item data. Transaction data describes the overall transaction (transaction ID, total sale, tax, shipping, etc.) while item data describes the items purchased in the transaction (sku, description, category, etc.). All of this data eventually ends up in GA reports. Here’s a complete list of the data:

Transaction Data

Transaction ID: your internal transaction ID [required]
Affiliate or store name
Total
Tax
Shipping
City
State or region
Country

Item Data

Transaction ID: same as in transaction data [required]
SKU
Product name
Product category or product variation
Unit price [required]
Quantity [required]

A few notes about the data. First, the geo-location data is no longer used by Google Analytics. The new version of GA tries to identify where the buyer is located using an IP address lookup.

Also, you should avoid using any non-alpha numeric characters in the data. Especially in the numeric fields. Do not add a currency identifier (i.e. dollar sign) in the total, tax or shipping fields. this can cause problems with the data.

Continue reading parts 2-4 of this series on EpikOne's Blog, Analytics Talk

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics

Share Customizations and Dive Much Deeper, Available Soon…

Sebastian Tonkin — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:53:00 +0000

Today at eMmetrics San Jose, we announced four feature updates coming soon to Google Analytics. These features are especially relevant if you're an Advanced user of Google Analytics.

Pivoting and Secondary Dimensions

Pivoting and Secondary Dimensions are new features available in most table views that allow inline cross-tabular analysis of data. You can use these new power features to do in-depth, on-the-fly analysis and see all the information in the same table. View data by two dimensions at once, such as keywords and cities. Next, pivot by another dimension such as source, while also viewing two additional metrics such as visits and pages/visit.... all within a single table view.

The possibilities are virtually endless and potentially mind boggling (you've been warned!). Watch the video below.

Share Custom Reports and Advanced Segment Customizations

Also announced today is the ability to share customizations you have made to Custom Reports and Advanced Segmentation by simply sharing a URL. Think you have the ultimate custom SEO report? Post the URL for the report to your blog or email it to a friend. When people click on it, they import the report structure, so rather than seeing your data, they see the report you built, but with their data in it. Now people can share their more interesting Google Analytics customizations without having to send detailed instructions, just share a URL!

Manage Customizations Across Profiles

In addition, if you have multiple profiles you will be able to pick and choose which ones get which Custom Reports and Advanced Segments associated with your account. So if you import or create the ultimate Search Engine Marketing report and one of your profiles doesn't do SEM, simply don't add it to that profile.

All of these new features are in beta and will first be available to show attendees, then will begin rolling out in everyone's reports over the coming weeks.

Posted by Brett Crosby, Google Analytics Team

Surface your Google Analytics data in Google Ad Planner

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:10:00 +0000

We know that web publishers can get frustrated when public estimates of their traffic don't match what they're seeing in their web analytics accounts. Publishers with ad revenue at stake need to present the best possible data to advertisers, but they couldn't do much about it... until now.

Today, we are announcing an integration with Google Ad Planner Publisher Center that allows you to opt in some of your Google Analytics data into Google Ad Planner so that you can replace traffic estimates with directly measured Google Analytics data. Of course, this feature is strictly optional and provides the most value to publishers who have ads on their site. A lot of publishers have requested this feature and we hope that those of you who do enable the feature will enjoy seeing data that matches what you see in Google Analytics.

To see how your site is currently displayed in Google Ad Planner, visit the Google Ad Planner Publisher Center and search for your site. If you want to get started managing your site profile in Google Ad Planner and opt in your Google Analytics traffic metrics, first enable the "Share my Google Analytics data with Google products only" from within your Google Analytics data sharing settings page. Then, go to your Google Ad Planner account, sign in, and select the Google Analytics metrics you'd like to share publicly. Once you do, your Google Analytics traffic metrics will replace Google Ad Planner's estimates of your traffic, and potential advertisers can see the important metrics that you are seeing.*

For more information about the Google Ad Planner Publisher Center, visit the Ad Planner Help Center, or watch our video below:

*Please note that publishers who decide to share their Analytics data for the first time may have to wait up to 48 hours to see the traffic data in their Ad Planner account.

Posted by Wayne Lin, Google Ad Planner Team

Nine New Google Analytics API Client Libraries To Get You Started

Sebastian Tonkin — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:56:00 +0000

Its been a week since we launched the Google Analytics Data Export API and we're already seeing Google Analytics being used in exciting new ways. For example, Michael L. of the New York Public Library is visualizing search data as tag clouds, and Patrick C. is using the Google Analytics API in conjunction with technical software to generate plots of online buzz and graphs of site traffic flows.

Sometimes it's easier getting started using the tools you're most familiar with. While we initially released Java and JavaScript client libraries, a number of talented 3rd party developers have created 9 new Google Analytics Export API client libraries in PHP, .NET, Python and Ruby. All of these libraries have been released as opensource and are supported by the developers themselves. We're very excited to see developers building on top of our API and giving back to the community.

In addition to these libraries, we've added new JavaScript interactive samples to play with the API in real time. These fully interactive examples allow you to see how the API gets data, visualize the data returned, review the code and even edit the functionality directly in the browser (You need a Google Analytics account to make this work).

If you haven't done so already already, come share your new apps, tutorials, and best practices in the Google Analytics API discussion group.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

Seminars for Success coming to Melbourne, Phoenix and Toronto in May

Sebastian Tonkin — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:30:00 +0000

That's right, we're going to be in Australia, Canada and of course the USA...

Seminars for Success are day-long seminars designed to help you improve your online marketing and get the most out of Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer. We've selected industry professionals from our Google Analytics Authorized Consultant network to teach these seminars in cities around the U.S.

Google Analytics – Introduction & User Training

Thursday, May 14 - Melbourne, Australia
Tuesday, May 26 - Toronto, Canada
Wednesday, May 27 - Phoenix, AZ

Walk away from day one with the knowledge to take actionable information out of Google Analytics and drive your business decisions. Day one topics include:

Introduction to Web Analytics
Common Interface Features
Dashboard Reports & Customization
Understanding Visitors
Much, Much More…

Google Analytics – Advanced Technical Implementation

Friday, May 15 - Melbourne, Australia
Wednesday, May 27 - Toronto, Canada
Thursday, May 28 - Phoenix, AZ

Day two takes you through Google Analytics configurations, best practices, filter set ups and advanced installs and implementations. Day two topics include:

Profiles and Strategies
Filters – Uses and Implementation
Profile and Filter Combinations
Goals & Funnels - Configuration & Setup
And much, much more…

Landing Page Testing with Google Website Optimizer

Friday, May 29 - Phoenix, AZ

The Google Website Optimizer experts present this practical course taking you through the process of testing your site to improving your users’ experience and seeing your conversion rates soar. The course includes an overview of Website Optimizer, loads of testing best practices, and hands-on experience to better understand and run A/B and multivariate tests on your website and key landing pages.

Seats are limited, so register today!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

Analytics and AdSense, Together at Last

Sebastian Tonkin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:30:00 +0000

For the past few months, more and more Analytics users have been invited to integrate their Analytics and AdSense accounts. Today that feature has become available to everyone. That means if you have an AdSense account, it's time to get it linked! Here's how:

Linking your Analytics and AdSense Accounts

Log in to AdSense
Click the link that says "Integrate your AdSense account with Google Analytics" on the Reports > Overview tab
Follow the on-screen instructions

Having trouble? Visit this help center article.

Which Reports are Available

Once you link your accounts, you'll find an AdSense-specific menu under the "Content" section of Analytics containing these reports:

The Top AdSense Content report allows you to see more details about specific pages on your site and analyze ad performance. For instance, if you find that some of your pages generate a high number of pageviews but aren't monetizing as well as other pages, you can focus your optimization efforts on improving these pages.
The Top AdSense Referrers report can help you see how different incoming traffic sources contribute to your revenue.
Last, the AdSense Trending report lets you analyze how your site generates revenue during different times of the day and different days of the week.

How to Read the Reports

Check out this video to get a better understanding of how to use these reports:

You'll also notice that other sections of your Analytics account will show a new "AdSense Revenue" tab. You'll be able to compare how much of your AdSense revenue is coming from new visitors versus existing ones, and view revenue based on user language.

Enjoy your new data, and be sure to visit the Help Center if you have other questions about linking your accounts or reviewing your reports.

Like the new feature? Hate it? Leave a comment and let us know!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

The Analytics Pro’s Tools of the Trade

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:07:00 +0000

Just as having the right web analytics data is critical to making smart marketing decisions, having the right set of tools is equally imperative when it comes to testing & tuning your Google Analytics implementation. Read on to discover the tools used by one Analytics Pro in troubleshooting and solving Google Analytics problems every day.

Why you need tools and what you can use them for

Implementing Google Analytics can be easy - just copy and paste the script produced during the account or profile creation process, right? Yes, and no. For more complex websites, it's a good idea to take some extra steps yourself, or hire someone, to validate your installation and make sure everything's working as it should.

When problems arise they are usually easy to spot within Google Analytics reports. Odd data such as a high degree of "self-referrals" (visits being reported as "referred" from your own domain name), a strangely high rate of conversions for an unexpected traffic source or medium, or an amazingly low bounce rate (3.8% bounce rate isn't really good, it's broken) are signs something may be wrong.

Enter the toolbox! In it you'll find an array resources for quickly identifying the root causes of Google Analytics anomalies - those most commonly being

JavaScript errors,
cookie problems, or
client-side page load time issues (not to be confused with slow connections... this is different).

Tools every Google Analytics professional should have

1) The Browser to Start with: Firefox

The Firefox browser is probably the most important tool for technical debugging work with Google Analytics. The browser itself isn't what matters so much as the myriads of add-ons that are available for it. To get started on building your toolbox, get Firefox if you don't have it already (and don't worry, there are some tools for Internet Explorer too!).

2) Working with JavaScript: Firebug for Firefox

This is where the march of add-ons for Firefox begins. The first and probably most important tool in the box is Firebug, an add-on for Firefox. Use the following Firebug features when debugging Google Analytics implementations:

Detecting JavaScript errors quickly and easily - identify the script and line of code within the script that is the culprit
Testing JavaScript code within the browser environment without having to edit an actual page on the server using the script console window in Firebug

Firebug can do much more than just detect script errors and help you rapidly test JavaScript, but these applications are particularly useful for Google Analytics technical work, especially when used in conjunction with additional tools detailed below.

3) Working with Cookies: Web Developer Toolbar in Firefox

The Web Developer Toolbar is most useful for Cookie analysis and diagnosis when working with Google Analytics. It is much faster to use when needing to view just what cookies have are currently set for a given page you are viewing. You can easily see key information for each cookie, find the "utm" cookies, and view details such as the domain the cookies were written for and what the values are.

4) Tracking the Data Stream: Live HTTP headers

Debugging JavaScript and cookies is where troubleshooting begins. Once you are confident the scripts are working properly and cookies are appropriately set, the reporting mechanism for Google Analytics, the utm.gif tracking hit, must still take place in order for data to be reported into your Google Analytics account. Live HTTP headers is a tool of choice for identifying when these utm.gif tracking hits take place.

Bonus configuration option for Live Headers: under the "config" tab enter ".*__utm\.gif.*" (without the quotes) into the "Filter URLs with regexp" field, and make sure the field is checked. This will limit the Live Headers window to only show utm.gif hits, otherwise finding one or two utm.gif hits amidst all the other requests that will fly by may feel like the proverbial search for a needle in the haystack

5) Page Execution Speed: Chrome JavaScript Console

The JavaScript Console in Google's new Chrome Browser is perfect for detecting potential issues on sites that have a lot of other JavaScript running or have the Google Analytics tags placed on the page in a manner that other elements may slow down the code from running. The JavaScript console "resources" pane shows the number of seconds it takes for the Google Analytics script to be loaded and the utm.gif tracking hit to run.Consider this example: it took 6.58 seconds from when the browser began loading this page to when the ga.js file was loaded - and it took even more time before the utm.gif hit was fired! How many people leave before 6.58+ seconds? We will never know because of a latency issue on this page.

Tip: using this tool, if you detect a latency problem, consider optimizing the other JavaScript running on your site, optimizing image files, or placing the Google Analytics code higher in the page so that it does not have to wait for everything else to complete before it runs (note that placing the code in the of the page can bring some additional dependencies with it, so consider seeking the counsel of an experienced Google Analytics professional if considering this change).

Tools for Internet Explorer

While many will argue that Firefox or Chrome is a "better browser," we must face the reality that, for now at least, Internet Explorer sill leads the global market in browser use. Thus, if you do all your debugging in Firefox or Chrome, you may easily miss problems that would arise for Internet Explorer users. Or perhaps you're already aware of such problems and need to diagnose them further. Here are a few tools that are available for IE.

6) JavaScript Debugging in Internet Explorer: DebugBar

DebugBar is sort of like an Internet Explorer hybrid incarnation of the Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug add-ons for Firefox. Using this tool you can track down JavaScript errors in Internet Explorer in the same way Firebug works, plus some advantages. You really have to check it out to get a feel for all the features. Bottom-line: use this tool for analysis of JavaScript errors you suspect are holding up accurate Google Analytics reporting.

7) Live Data Stream Analysis in Internet Explorer: Fiddler2

Fiddler is like Live HTTP Headers, except that it is a standalone application that can detect HTTP traffic between any application your computer and outside web servers. This makes it more accurate than Live Headers in Firefox. It can be used with Internet Explorer, but also other browsers, including Firefox. The tools for analyzing captured requests, utm.gif hits included, are superior to Live HTTP Headers in many ways.

8) Cookies in Internet Explorer: IE Cookies Viewer

This small but powerful tool lets you easily find, view, and even modify cookies for Internet Explorer. It is indispensable for Google Analytics diagnostic and troubleshooting work when encountering cookie domain issues.

In Conclusion

So, there you have it: a plethora of tools that are tried and true means to the trouble-free Google Analytics end you're seeking. Here's a recap shortlist of the tools:

Firefox browser

Firebug for Firefox

WebDeveloper Toolbar for Firefox

LiveHTTPHeaders

Internet Explorer

DebugBar: web developer toolbar for Internet Explorer
Fiddler2 for request header analysis
IE Cookies Viewer

Chrome

JavaScript Console tool for latency measurement

Posted by Caleb Whitmore of Analytics Pros, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

Advanced Segments Swissotel Style

Sebastian Tonkin — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:12:00 +0000

Are you segmenting your data or just looking at aggregated numbers (like total visits)? If you're not segmenting, you're barely scratching the surface of what you can do with Analytics data. This is a favorite topic of Avinash Kaushik, Google's Analytics Evangelist, who has been encouraging segmentation since way back in 2006.

In a recent talk at a Google Analytics Masterclass in Singapore, Barbara Pezzi of Swissotel shared her company's experience using Advanced Segmentation to zero in on high-potential customers.

You can find the full story and presentation on the new Google Solutions for Southeast Asia blog. Check it out and get started segmenting your data today!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

Urchin Search Referral URL Update

Sebastian Tonkin — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:15:00 +0000

A brief update to yesterday's post about Google.com search referrals. We initially reported that Urchin Software might require a patch to handle the new URL structure, but after some additional testing, it turns out no patch is needed. Urchin can handle both the current and new URLs. The latest release (Urchin 6.5) has a bunch of new features, including the ability to tap into the AdWords API, so we suggest everyone upgrade regardless!

Posted by Bretty Crosby, Google Analytics Team

An upcoming change to Google.com search referrals; Google Analytics unaffected

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:50:00 +0000

First, just a heads-up that if you don't analyze your own traffic logs, use Urchin web analytics software, or develop web analytics software, you probably don't need to read this post. We're writing this for the most geeky among us, because Google Analytics will not be affected by this information. On the other hand, we do want to let you know about some changes to Google search that are coming down the pike, before you start seeing (potentially) alarming headlines.

Starting this week, you may start seeing a new referring URL format for visitors coming from Google search result pages. Up to now, the usual referrer for clicks on search results for the term "flowers", for example, would be something like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=flowers&btnG=Google+Search

Now you will start seeing some referrer strings that look like this:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=flowers&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

The key difference between these two urls is that instead of "/search?" the URL contains a "/url?". If you run your own analyses, be sure that you do not depend on the "/search?" portion of the URL to determine if a visit started with an organic search click. Google Analytics does not depend on the "/search?" string in the referrer, so users of Google Analytics will not notice a difference in their reports, but other analytics packages may need to adapt to this change in our referrer string to maintain accurate reports.

The new referrer URLs will initially only occur in a small percentage of searches. You should expect to see old and new forms of the URLs as this change gradually rolls out.

If you are using UTM-based tracking with Urchin Software, you'll want to stay tuned for a software update that we'll be making available soon. If you are using IP-Useragent based tracking with Urchin, you won't be affected since this form of tracking can successfully process both current and new referral strings.

Posted by Brett Crosby, Google Analytics Team

Using Site Search Features in Creative Ways

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:50:00 +0000

The Google Analytics Site Search feature is a powerful tool for analyzing visitor interest and behavior on your website, but that's not all it is good for. Using Site Search in some creative ways can leverage this tool for advanced multi-dimensional analysis equivalent to being able to set multiple, simultaneous user-defined segments.

What is Site Search in Google Analytics?

The Site Search reports in Google Analytics are designed to provide a means to analyze how visitors search the content on your site if you have a site search tool, whether it be one from Google itself such as Google Site Search or a Google Mini Search Appliance, a site search tool built into your website's Content Management System, or of of the myriads of other site-search tools available today.

These reports compile information about how many of your visitors use site search, what they search for, what page they start searching from, what pages they click to after searching, and more. Moreover, the reports can track as many searches per visit as are conducted. As with most other dimensions in Google Analytics, site search dimensions can be used in Advanced Segments and Custom reports to create an extremely powerful analysis engine.

How does Site Search work?

Site Search in Google Analytics is based on identifying pre-defined query values and category identifiers from the Request URI. The parameters can be anything - simply define them in the appropriate field in the profile configuration screen within your Google Analytics account. In the screenshot below you can see that Site Search has been enabled and is looking for several potential query parameters and category identifiers.

Thus, if Google Analytics received a pageview to a Request URI of "www.analyticspros.com/results.html?q=email+tracking&category=support" and the settings above were active for the profile, the Site Search reports would record the following:

A visit used site search
The search term "email tracking" was used once
This search was conducted in the "support" category

Another key feature about Site Search is the "search term refinement" report. This report shows a drill-down of searches performed after the term in question was searched. This is an incredibly important feature because it allows analysis of progression and relationship from one independent variable (search term) to another.

Looks like someone was a bit hungry when thinking about email marketing...

Where the "creative" uses begin

This is where the fun really gets started. Since Site Search is based on contents of a reported Request URI, we can pass anything we want into the Site Search reports. Consider what we already know about how Site Search works:

Site Search has two independent dimensions: category and keyword or term
If multiple searches are performed during the same visit they will all be recorded under the Search Terms report and can be related by way of the Refinements report
Any Request URI that contains a query string matching the defined parameters for search term and category will trigger a "site search" to be recorded

Thus, if we setup Site Search to capture meaningful data via the Request URI that wasn't site search but was still useful and relevant to analysis, the possibilities are endless!

Creative use in action: unlimited User-Defined segments

If you've been using Google Analytics for a while you may well have run into the fact that, currently, only one user-defined segmentation cookie value can be set at any given time. There are plenty of "alternative methods" to try and work around this reality one way or another. And note: this should not be confused with the recently released Advanced Custom Segments tool which is extremely powerful and can be used to create any number of custom segments. The user-defined and advanced segments features work as they are designed: however this method provides an additional way by which you can further extend your use of Google Analytics.

The Scenario

Let's say that you want to classify your visits by expressed industry and product interest based on the input of a form. Using standard user-defined segmentation would not work for this as it would only support industry or product interest. However with creative Site Search analysis, an unlimited number of "industry" and "product" interests can both be tracked for each session. A practical use of this would be tracking responses on a lead generation or sign-up form that had check boxes or select options for "Industry" and "Product".

How to make it happen:

In the example above (tracking fields in a form to create Site Search segments) you'll need to generate a virtual pageview with a defined Request URI syntax. For this example use:

pageTracker._trackPageview('/custom/lead-form/segment.html?segcat=[segment type]&segterm=[segment value]')

Where "segcat" is the identifier for a Site Search "category", "segterm" is the identifier for the Site Search "term", "[segment type] is either "industry" or "product", and "[segment value]" changes depending on the form field value.
For each industry and product field option on the form, create an "onclick" element that calls the pageTracker script with the corresponding values for "segment type" and "segment value" defined for that field.
The result will be a "pageview" hit each time a visitor selects a form option. Let's say you have 5 industries available and 10 products of potential interest, the resulting data would show which industries are most commonly selected and in what order, as well as which products are most desired, and how the products relate to each other via the Refinements report.

Why not use use Event Tracking for this?

It's a worthwhile question and has some merit, however at the time of this writing, you still need to request access to the Event Tracking beta before you can use it. Furthermore, Event Tracking can't be used in Advanced Custom Segments or Custom reports at the time of writing, nor does it have the Refinements analysis options and the "start pages" and "exit pages" reporting.

What are other creative uses for Site Search?

The example here is just one way in which Site Search can be used for more than, well, site search analysis. For example, a few additional uses include:

Tracking Rich Internet Applications (RIA's) using this Site Search method rather than Event Tracking can provide some advantages,
Tracking store product interest when the Category and Product name are persistently available in the URI or a Virtual Pageview can reveal new product interest trends for online retailers,
And using Site Search in creative ways to measure Internal Ads and Cross-promotions will clear the mist on what promotions really drive sales on your site.

In Closing

Like many things, using something in a way other than what it was designed for can be a dangerous activity, but fortunately for us Web Analysts this method of creatively extending Site Search has a lot of upside and little downside. So, go out and give it a shot. It is highly advisable to experiment in a non-production environment first, and even in a live environment, use multiple trackers - one for normal pageviews and one for normal pageviews + site search segmentation pageviews.

And, to give credit where credit is due: props to Justin Cutroni from EpikOne for mentioning this concept to me when Site Search was first released, and Mike Plummer from POP for expanding the technique as a method for event and interaction tracking.

Posted by Caleb Whitmore of Analytics Pros, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant.

Urchin.js is going dark!? No, it isn’t.

Sebastian Tonkin — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 22:13:00 +0000

There has been some chatter bouncing around the blogosphere and twittersphere that we are deprecating urchin.js sometime this summer. This is not accurate. To be clear: we have no immediate plans to decommission urchin.js. If and when we do, we will make sure users get clear, advanced notification from us and time to switch.

Now for the more nuanced story:
For about a year now, all new accounts have been set up using ga.js instead of urchin.js. Here some of the benefits to using ga.js:

Faster, smaller source file
Automatic detection of HTTPS
Increased namespace safety
More convenient set up for tracking e-commerce transactions
More customizable code for interactive Ajax-based sites
Ability to take advantage of the most up-to-date tracking functionality as it is added to Google Analytics

Generally speaking, there are good reasons to make the switch and we certainly encourage people to do so. However, there is no immediate need or requirement to do so. Make the switch to ga.js when it is convenient for you or when you are ready to start taking advantage of the improved functionality.

Posted by Brett Crosby, Google Analytics Team

April Seminars for Success – Boston, Orange County and Honolulu

Sebastian Tonkin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:24:00 +0000

We promised Hawaii when we first launch and now we can deliver! If that doesn't work, we will delivering seminars in Orange County and Boston! That's 3 cities to choose from in April.

It's your choice.. Pacific sun and surf in Orange County or Honolulu, flowers blooming in Boston. These seminars are brought to you by our Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer experts.

Learn how to truly leverage the power of Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer through Seminars for Success this spring in Orange County and Honolulu. These full day, interactive seminars are led in person by the experts and designed to give you the skills necessary for a competitive edge in today’s tough competitive landscape. Understanding the wealth of data provided by your website and your visitors, coupled with systematically rising conversion rates through landing page testing will put you one up over the competition!

Google Analytics – Introduction & User Training
Orange County - Wednesday, April 15
Honolulu – Tuesday, April 21
Boston - Monday, April 27

Day one offers an introduction to Google Analytics and then some. Learn how to turn the sea of web analytics data into information that you can use to make the decisions that drive your bottom line. Day one topics include:

Introduction to Web Analytics
Common Interface Features
Dashboard Reports & Customization
Understanding Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content, Goals and Ecommerce
Motion Chart Visualization
Analytics Best Practices for Branding, Lead Generation & Ecommerce
And much, much more…

Google Analytics – Advanced Technical Implementation
Orange County – Thursday, April 16
Honolulu – Wednesday, April 22
Boston- Tuesday, April 28

The second day will show you how to install and configure the advanced features and capabilities of Google Analytics. We'll show you how to use every ounce of this tool with tips and tricks, technical aspects, and how to avoid common problems. Day two topics include:

Profiles and Strategies
Filters – Uses and Implementation
Goals & Funnels - Configuration & Setup
Ecommerce Implementations
Site Search, Event Tracking, Custom Reporting and Advanced Segmentation
And much, much more…

Landing Page Testing with Google Website Optimizer
Orange County – Friday, April 17
Honolulu – Thursday, April 23

Learn how to make the most of the visitors to your site with landing page testing and get hands-on experience in designing, setting up, running, and analyzing A/B and multivariate tests with Google Website Optimizer. The experts will show you how to improve your users’ experience and continually increase your conversion rates through testing. The Website Optimizer Seminar includes:

An overview of testing and Website Optimizer
How to identify problematic pages and estimate sample sizes
Loads of testing best practices drawn from real tests and case studies
Hands-on lab experience in setting up, configuring, & launching both A/B and Multivariate tests
How to interpret the data and run follow up experiments

Seats are limited, so register today for the April seminars!

Posted by Eva Woo, Google Analytics Team

Regular Expression Tips and Tricks

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:56:00 +0000

What are Regular Expressions and Why Use Them?

Regular Expressions (RegEx) are a set of characters you can use match one or more strings of text. The main reason to use Regular Expressions is that they support wildcard matching, letting you capture a lot of variations (in URLs for example) using a single string of characters.

Here are a few examples when Regular Expressions are useful in Google Analytics:

Matching multiple pages when defining a goal or funnel page
Exclude a range of IP addresses when defining a filter
Defining complex advanced segments
Including and excluding multiple URLs from reports such as the Top Content report

Check out this help center article for some basic definitions of Regular Expressions and how they work.

Tips and Tricks

Here are some tips, tricks and flourishes to make your RegEx sing.

USE TRIAL AND ERROR: There is only one really, really good way to write Regular Expressions. You can use all the testing tools in the world, but the only good way is to get them wrong, and then rewrite them and rewrite them until you are sure that they are right. So... be sure to have a profile that you can use just for testing.
KEEP IT SIMPLE: If you need to write an expression to match "new visits", and the only options that you will be matching against are "new visits" and "repeat visits," just the word "new" is good enough.
REGULAR EXPRESSIONS ARE GREEDY: They will match everything they possibly can, unless you force them not to. If your expression is "visits", it will match "new visits" and "repeat visits." After all, they both included the expression "visits." To make them less greedy, you have to make them more specific
DON'T OVER DO IT: (See #3 above.) For example, many people use a Regular Expression only when creating an IP address filter. If the IP address is 6.255.255.255, they create an expression like this: 6\.255\.255\.255 -- and forget that that will also match 26.255.255.255, etc. So in a situation like this, you really do need to start with a beginning anchor, ^6\.255\.255\.255 . A beginning anchor (called a carat), says, "To be a match, it has to start here."
MATCH EVERYTHING WITH .*: Some combinations of Regular Expressions are very special. Perhaps the most useful combination is a dot followed by a star, like this: .* And don't forget about a dot followed by a star, but in parenthesis, like this: (.*) The first one means, get everything. It is your ultimate wildcard. On the other hand, (.*) means, get everything and put it in a variable. You'll find that (.*) is very helpful when you are creating custom advanced filters.
BACKSLASH TO ESCAPE: Backslash is the most frequent RegEx you will probably use. It means, take this special character and turn it into an everyday character. So if you are trying to match to "www.mysite.com?pid=123," you have a problem -- unless you use your backslash. The question mark is a Regular Expression, and only by using a backslash, like this: "www.mysite.com\?pid=123" can you take away its special powers. If you aren't sure whether something is a Regular Expression or not, go ahead and use that backslash -- it won't do any harm.
WHITESPACE IS WHITESPACE: The most frequent question you might ask is, "How do I create a white space with Regular Expressions?" The answer is usually, just use white space. So if you need to match to "Google Analytics," you can make your Regular Expression be "Google Analytics."

Other Resources

Most of the basic Regular Expressions (RegEx) needs are covered in the Google Analytics documentation (you should start here if you want to learn those basics). Watch out though, just because something is not in here doesn't mean Google Analytics doesn't support it.

Other good sources are regular-expressions.info and RegEx Coach, an interactive tool for testing Regular Expressions.

How do you use Regular Expressions? Leave a comment and let us know!

Posted by Robbin Steif of LunaMetrics , a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

Back to Basics: Discover Analytics Checklist

Sebastian Tonkin — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:16:00 +0000

Google Analytics has a variety of features that can help you explore and understand your data. But with so many features, beginners are often baffled at where to start. To help you navigate through the product, we've created the Discover Analytics Checklist which groups features into bite sized chunks. The checklist will keep track of what you've mastered and what you have yet to explore. You can start with "Install Tracking Code" and work your way to the "Advanced Features" or prioritize based on your needs (although, we do recommend you start at "Getting Started"). As an added bonus, you can sigh a self-satisfied 'Ahhh' each time you cross off an Analytics to-do from your list.

We hope this can help you keep track of your steps and give you the reference material you need for implementation troubleshooting tips. We will continue to update and expand this list as new features are launched.

Posted by Melissa Hsieh & Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

New Tracking Options with AdWords Rich Media and Video Templates

Sebastian Tonkin — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:32:00 +0000

On the Analytics blog, we spend a lot of time talking about bounce rate. The bounce rate is defined as the percent of users who leave your website after viewing just one page (Single Page Access / Entries). There's been a new development in AdWords that could help lower your bounce rate for display ads, while giving you more granularity into which segment or area of an ad visitors tend to click on.

With the new Rich Media and Video templates in the AdWords Display Ad Builder, you can now show off several products and define multiple destination URLs, all within the same ad. Using Google Analytics, you can add tracking parameters to the end of each destination URL, telling you exactly which items users found to be most interesting in the ad. This will give you insights on your creative, such as which items to focus on and how prominently they should be featured in the ads.

Here's an example: You're selling multiple kinds of shoes, each with a different landing page. You upload images of 4 different shoes to a rich media template, and define a unique destination URL for each, adding Analytics parameters. You run your ad on the Google content network and using Google Analytics, you see that Shoe 3 was the most clicked. You can now alter your creatives for other display ads to focus more on Shoe 3. Your click through rates for your ads increase, and your costs per conversion decrease.

To learn more about these templates and the display ad builder tool, take a look at our post on the AdWords blog.

Posted by Ryan Hayward, AdWords Display Ad Builder Team

Marketing Optimization with Google Analytics

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:19:00 +0000

Improve ROI from Shopping Comparison Sites

These days, I'm getting a lot of clients who want to increase their ROI on referral site campaigns. We'll explore this topic by talking specifically about shopping comparison sites. The same techniques are generally applicable to all kinds of referring sites. My goal is to help you track and identify the referring sites that bring you quality traffic and generate more business and profit.

We'll explore:

How to identify shopping comparison sites in Google Analytics reports.
How to assess revenue generated by each of the sites.
How to export your Google Analytics data and merge it with cost data.
How to analyze to identify winners and fix under performers.

Identify Shopping Comparison Sites in Google Analytics Reports

To identify the sites in question, check with your marketing team and get a list of all the shopping comparison sites you use. This sounds like an easy step, but sometimes it takes a lot of back and forth with your marketing team to get the complete list. In this list, you should see some common names such as NexTag, BizRate, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, DealNews, and Shopping.com. There might be other sites that are not as common but may be applicable to your vertical, so look for those too. You could also include other sites in this analysis such as Yahoo! Shopping if you have your products listed there.

Let's get started!

Say your site gets traffic from NexTag, BizRate, Shopping.com, and Yahoo! Shopping. In Google Analytics, go to Traffic Sources, click on Referring sites, and then use this inline filter to quickly look at the sites you want to analyze:

You can examine time on site, bounce rates, and other readily available metrics.

If you like to review this report frequently, and you should if you are spending a lot of money on these sites, you can create an advanced segment with "Referral" as the medium and then list your comparison sites as the sources.

Assess Revenue Generated by Each of the Sites

In the same Traffic Sources/Referring Sites area, you can next click on the Ecommerce tab and get a full picture of revenue and conversion rates.

In this report, and for this specific site, you'll see that although NexTag generates a lot of visits, its conversion rate, 1% is less than half of BizRate which is 2.32%. You can also see that shopping.com did very well with a conversion rate of 2.94%. Traffic from shopping.com seems to outperform the rest as it has the highest conversion rate and also the highest average order value.

So far these reports are very helpful in providing easy access to how each source is performing and the revenue it is generating.

There is still one thing that is missing though - cost data! There is a cost in bringing these visits to the site, and what if the cost of listing our products on these shopping sites is higher than the revenue being generated? I would think that a ninja analyst as well as a novice analyst would definitely want to include cost data and ROI in their reports. After all, you are in business to make money, not just to improve conversion rates!

Export your Google Analytics Data and Merge it With Shopping Sites Cost Data

For now, Google Analytics doesn't allow importing cost data into its reports (except for Adwords), so we will export the GA data and merge it with the shopping sites cost data in a spreadsheet.

Step 1: In the above report (Traffic Sources/Referring Sites, with your sites filtered), click on the "Export" button, choose the CSV format, and save the file

Step 2: Get your cost data from your respective shopping comparison sites.

Step 3: Using Excel or a Google spreadsheet, open the CSV file and, insert your cost data, and run your ROI calculation

For our analysis below, the client has indicated that to make money (profitably) they can't afford to spend more than 25% of their revenue on advertising. So we created the Return on Ad Spend table below taking into account the client provided business metrics. (you can view this table at the following link: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pkrS9PTOkmimeBKiGJ3oZMQ)

Analyze to Identify Winners and Fix Under Performers

It is clear from the table above which sites are profitable, namely sites#2 and #4. Both had a less than 25% of Ad Spend/Revenue ratio.
It is also clear that the site with the highest conversion rate, site#1, might not be profitable at all!
What actions can be taken?

See how you can get more of the high quality traffic from sites#2 and #4.
Immediately investigate site#1's traffic because it is a top spender with an unacceptable ad spend ratio.
Once you are done with the above, start examining the other under-performing sites.
You can also look into average order value and create a different ROI baseline it. Maybe it is OK to spend more on advertisements for sites that bring a higher average order value.

What could be causing such bad return on sites#1 and #3?

Mismatch between product listed on the shopping site and product listed on your landing page.
Mismatch in pricing: you advertise one price on the shopping site and when visitors come to your site, they find a higher price.
Ineffective bidding strategy: you are paying too much for clicks on your listed products.
Site related issues such as slow load time.
Seasonality. For example, I'm sure Christmas ornaments aren't hot sellers in the peak of summer.

A few other comments:

When analyzing sales/conversion/ROI, ensure that you have all data elements included. For example, if your online business allows for phone orders, you then would want to ensure that phone order revenue and cost data are all appropriately attributed to their original sources. This is much easier said than done but there is tremendous value in doing it!
Averages often don't tell the complete picture, so digging deeper into the data of each site and its categories is likely to reveal even better insights.
The above analysis is done for a one-time period. You would want to trend this data daily, weekly and/or monthly and watch for external factors as well. For example, a weak economy is likely to have a negative impact on sales across the board.

To summarize:

Look for opportunities to get more out of what you are spending. Don't let your comparison shopping site ad spend be set on auto-pilot.
Track and analyze on-site metrics including revenue by referring site.
Take one more step: merge your cost data and run your ROI calculations to find what is profitable and what is not.
Act on your findings!

Posted by Feras Alhlou of E-Nor, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

Back to Basics: Control access to your data

Sebastian Tonkin — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:39:00 +0000

Many Google Analytics account owners give people access to their account (e.g. account manager, clients, staff members) in order to get help with managing their account or interpreting the data in their reports.

Luckily, the User Manager feature in Analytics prevents you from giving out your user name and password to dozens of people – which means no worrying about people poking around in your account settings without your knowledge. User Manager lets you easily give and take away different levels of account access to anyone you want.

Administrator
This level of access gives full privileges to your account. Administrators can change settings, such as adding (or removing) profiles, users, filters and goals. They can also give other people access to your account. Please note that administrators have control over all profiles and reports in your account.

Reports access
This access level gives a person the ability to view reports, but he or she won't be able make any changes to the account. Reports access users can be further restricted to view reports by specific profiles by the Administrator.

The video below walks through the process of adding or editing user-level access to your account.

Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

Google Analytics Cake

Sebastian Tonkin — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:00:00 +0000

Umm... delicious. Nice work Tim and Clarkson!

Find out how he made it.

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

Using Google Analytics to Create an Optimization Plan

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:59:00 +0000

Let’s face it, your website is never really finished. Testing pages is an inexpensive way to manage a constantly shifting audience and market. It's great for:

Increasing ROI on your advertising
Teaching you about the likes and dislikes of your customers
Trying out alternatives used by competitors
Breaking down preconceptions about what works
Convincing a stubborn boss to try something new

What and where to test?

So where do you start? First you need a goal. What do you want users on your site to do? Complete a form, buy something, sign up for a newsletter? Without a goal, it's difficult to optimize, so you should be sure to define one if you haven't already.

Once you have a goal, you can use Google Analytics to identify those pages that are having the biggest negative impact on the total number of people "converting," or achieving that goal. These are the pages to test.

Top landing pages report

(Content > Top Landing Pages)

This report gives you instant insight into how well (or poorly) your landing pages are performing. You want to find pages that have both high "entrances" and a high "bounce rate." These pages are costing you a lot of visitors.

Goal visualization report

(Goals > Funnel Visualization)

The funnel visualization in Google Analytics shows you where people leave during your buying process. For example, the below report shows that 40% of the 200 potential buyers left during "Step X" in the checkout process. Average order value is $100. This means the merchant is losing up to $8,000 in revenue every month due to "Step X."

Exit pages

(Content > Top Exit Pages)

With this report, you should look for pages that are designed to sell, but have high exit rates. Using the top content report, I see that my product pages have a 35% exit rate. These pages are supposed to persuade potential customers to add products to the shopping cart, so they would be good candidates for optimization.

Having looked at these reports, there's a fair chance you've found high-impact pages that perform below average. If not, you can take a look at the "top content" report and pick a few pages that see a lot of traffic, but are poorly designed or out-of-date.

Setting up a test with Google Website Optimizer

Google has a free tool to test you pages called Google Website Optimizer. Find out more here .

Here are a few tips for using Google Website Optimizer and Google Analytics together:

Make sure you get to see your variances in Google Analytics.

In the case of an A/B test this is relatively easy. Tag your variances with the GA code snippet and perhaps give them a unique name. For a multivariate test this requires a little bit of technical knowledge; you have add a little bit of code to your test page. You’ll find the instructions here.

Make a filter to exclude your test data from your other profiles
Create an extra profile where you only measure your test pages
Create Advanced Segments and extra goals in your testing profile relevant to the test. This lets you evaluate the test outcome on different visitor segments.

Other Resources

Have another resource? Add a comment!

Posted by Tim Bakker and Janco Klijnstra of Traffic4u, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

Back to Basics: Is your website a "closer"?

Sebastian Tonkin — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:25:00 +0000

Many successful sales people describe closing a sale as a process that is composed of many steps. It's a dialogue -- a series of information exchanges that culminates in the ultimate sale or final agreement. This closing process occurs thousands of times every day on websites around the world. Websites and visitors engage in a dialogue during which products are chosen, shipping and credit card information is provided, and sales are closed.

But a sales person has an advantage -- he or she can observe where customers get concerned or uncomfortable during a sales process and address these obstacles before they result in a lost sale. Your website can't do this by itself.

It's up to you, the website owner or manager, to look at what happens during each step of the closing process (i.e. conversion funnel) and find a way to make each page in the process as helpful and painless as possible.

You can look at the Funnel Visualization report in Google Analytics to see how many of your prospects move from one step to the next, where they drop out of the conversion process and where they go instead. Once you have this information, you can start fixing the pages that lose would-be customers, just as a good sales person addresses obstacles that prevent customers from closing.

You can learn how to use the Funnel Visualization report in the latest Google Analytics in 60 seconds video. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Google Analytics at SES NY

Sebastian Tonkin — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 02:15:00 +0000

SES New York is next week and Google Analytics will be there. You can come by the booth to meet members of the team and learn more about the latest features.

Here are a couple of sessions that you might enjoy:

Pay Per Conversation
Tuesday, March 24th, 1:45pm to 2:45pm
Sandra Cheng, Product Manager for Google Website Optimizer, and Bryan Eisenberg, will discuss a different approach to looking at your website's visitors. Every click is a potential customer trying to engage you; will you continue the dialogue or have them bounce off your landing page just moments after they arrive? This session will show you how to identify missed conversations and what you can do to improve them and your PPC ROI.
More info

Google Workshop: Maximizing Your Website's ROI

Wednesday, March 25th, 4:00pm to 5:15pm

Alex Torres, Product Marketing Manager for Google Enterprise, will talk about some of the many tools Google offers site owners can use to improve their website's return on investment. He'll also be giving a more in-depth look at Google Site Search.

More info

If you also use AdWords, there's one more session you may want to attend: Preview the new AdWords interface, on Wednesday, March 25th from 10:45am to 12pm. They're taking questions in advance, so please send them in. Enjoy.

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

Tips for Tracking Email Marketing Campaigns

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:09:00 +0000

Email campaigns are a cost-effective way of attracting quality return visitors to your site. It's important that you tag your email campaigns with campaign tags so that you can track how well each email performs. This lets you optimize your efforts and track your return on investment.

What are campaign tags?

Campaign tags are additional information that you apply to links. Once a link is clicked, the tag information is passed to Google Analytics. Tagged links allow you to evaluate the performance of individual links within your emails.

Why tag email links?

Let's say that you send out an email newsletter in January and February that does not use campaign tags. Visitors coming from emails reported within the Referring Sites Report will only include visitors coming from web-based email clients like Gmail:

But, did they visit your website as a result of the January email or the February email? Unless you've used campaign tags, you'll have no way of knowing.

Visitors who click a link in your email using an email client on their computer will be reported as Direct Traffic -- and will therefore be grouped in with visitors who used bookmarks or who typed your website's URL into their browser.

A quick reference for tagging emails

The Google Analytics URL Builder is a great tool for generating tagged links to use within your email campaigns.

You can pass the following information to Google Analytics in the form of campaign tagged links:

Name	Description	Examples
Campaign Name	Name of the email marketing campaign.	Email News, Email Promo 14 April 2009, Email Newsletter May 2009
Campaign Source	Use Campaign Source to identify who distributed your email newsletter.	If you are sending your own email campaign then use your own company name. If you advertise in other email newsletters then use the name of the particular company sending that newsletter.
Campaign Medium	Set Campaign Medium as 'email' for all your email marketing campaigns.	email
Campaign Content (optional)	If you have multiple calls to action within your email, use different Campaign Content tags to see which version drives more visitors.	20% Discount Offer, New Product Information, Support Services
Campaign Term (optional)	If you have different types of links (e.g. text, buttons, images, etc.) use a different Campaign Term for each type.	Product Image, Read More Button, Text Link

Make sure that you are consistent with the names that you use in your tags. For example, if you enter the source as Company_Name, company-name and Company+Name for three different emails, Google Analytics will report these as three unique sources.

Important Tip: Remember to generate new campaign tagged links for each campaign you send, otherwise you will not be able to compare your individual campaigns over time.

Making Life Easier

Don't have time to manually create campaign tagged links? There are several online email marketing solutions that automatically apply Google Analytics campaign tags to the links included within your emails.

Campaign Monitor (http://www.campaignmonitor.com/)
MailChimp (http://www.mailchimp.com/)
VerticalResponse (http://www.verticalresponse.com/)
AWeber (http://www.aweber.com/)

These four solutions can automatically apply campaign tags to links in emails.

Campaign Monitor allows you to define which links should automatically have campaign tags applied (specified by domains) and allows you to assign the Campaign Source on the settings page.

MailChimp allows you to enter the Campaign Name when you create a new email campaign.

Be sure to research the limitations of each tool before launching your campaign. Campaign Monitor and MailChimp do not automatically differentiate unique links within an email. You may still want to manually tag each link within your campaign if that data is important to your organization.

That's all! Happy tracking.

Posted by Benjamin Mangold of Mangold Sengers, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

New Podcast "Get Your Google Analytics On"

Sebastian Tonkin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:33:00 +0000

Check out this new podcast from Startup Nation. This week's episode gives a great beginner overview on how to get the most out of Google Analytics. It starts by explaining how to get up and running, and then explains how Startup Nation has used analytics to improve the performance of their own site. If you'd like to check out the contents before listening, you can also find an overview here.

Thanks to Brian Cleveland from Statup Nation for sharing his expertise. Happy Friday!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

Motion Chart Scavenger Hunt Followup

Sebastian Tonkin — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:05:00 +0000

Last week we launched some new features in Motion Charts. Instead of telling you what they were, we decided to let you discover them for yourself and post what you found in our blog comments.

It didn't take long for several of you to find the new features. Karthik was first to notice that you can now control bubble opacity and that you can zoom into the chart. This is a great feature that allows you to eliminate the distraction of outliers and focus on the core data set. Nick and Adrian P. also found the zooming and panning feature and the bar charts, but a special Congratulations is in order to Rajeev Edmonds who found (almost) all of the new features.

One feature hinted at in Rajeev's comment bears a little more explanation. It's now easier to find specific data points because there's a Select list which has all the data points listed in alphabetical order. So, instead of mousing over the dots or barchart, you can just select them in the Select list. And then, when you don't need the labels anymore, you deselect all the data points by clicking "Deselect all."

A couple of not-so-new features were also identified. Lin/Log scale and the ability to bookmark charts have been there all along -- but we're happy that you've noticed them again :)

As far as the Advanced State string, this little feature was built to support hard-core flash developers who work with the Motion Charts tool, but was not actually intended to make it into Google Analytics. In other words, it's a (harmless) bug, so thanks to everyone for noticing it!

So what do you think about the scavenger hunt idea? We've never heard of anyone else launching features this way and we thought it was a bit unique -- did you like it? Are you clear on what the features are now? Do you use Motion Charts? Leave us a comment and let us know.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Control Your Search Result URL

Sebastian Tonkin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Tracking parameters allow analytics programs to differentiate between paid ads and other sources of traffic, such as direct visits, organic searches, or referrals. They are invaluable for understanding the effectiveness of online advertising.

From an SEO perspective, URL parameters can be somewhat problematic. People who click on your ads may like the content so much that they decide to share your webpage with friends or post it on their own websites. Although this type of viral marketing is a good thing, imagine what happens if the link that they copy looks something like this:

http://www.yourwebsite.com/landingpage/?utm_campaign=FreeOffer&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc

If this link is popular enough, then search engines will begin to index this URL. It may supplant the same version of this page without tracking parameters in the search results. Clicks on this new organic result will increment the visits number for Google(cpc) when it should really be attributed to Google(organic).

One popular SEO method of dealing with this challenge is instituting a 301 redirect and storing campaign variables in a cookie. Although this prevents search engines from indexing the same content multiple times, it has the undesired effect of stripping campaign parameters and generally messing up analytics tracking (boo!).

Google now supports a new format that provides webmasters with more control over the URL that is returned in the search results. You can specify your preferred version of the URL so that properties like link popularity are consolidated to this version. Unlike the 301 redirect, this will not affect your analytics tracking. Read more on how to set up your pages to avoid duplicate indexing on the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Happy Friday!

Posted by Matt Parry, Google Analytics Team

What is your Google Analytics IQ?

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:27:00 +0000

In today's economic climate, data-driven marketing and website decision making is increasingly important. If you have solid Google Analytics skills, more than ever, your talents are needed. But, even if you're just starting out learning Google Analytics, we have some good news for you.

Beginning today, we are offering an online course in web analytics techniques and Google Analytics implementation, administration, and analysis tools. The course is offered free of charge to everyone who is interested. In addition, we're also offering a test you can take to prove you are qualified in Google Analytics -- the Google Analytics Individual Qualification -- or IQ test.

It costs $50 to take the test. Once you pass, you'll be registered as Google Analytics qualified. You must receive a score of at least 75% to pass, so even if you already consider yourself an expert, be sure to at least review the online course before taking the test.

For more details or to start the course, simply visit ConversionUniversity.com. There's a FAQ with all the details and a link to the Google Analytics IQ test.

Best of luck!

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Back to Basics: Install your tracking code in under two minutes

Sebastian Tonkin — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:58:00 +0000

This post is the second post in our "Back to Basics" Series. Last week we covered accounts vs profiles.

Before you can start gathering data about your visitors to your website, the very first thing you have to do is to install the Google Analytics Tracking Code on your site. It sounds simple enough, but this can be a very big hurdle if you're not familiar with editing the pages on your website.

If this sounds like you, you may want to follow the instructions in this post or pass the information along to your webmaster. To prove how easy it can be, we've even timed ourselves to show how you can do this in under two minutes. (By the way, this assumes you've already created a Google Analytics account)

Step 1: Find your personalized Google Analytics Tracking Code (30 seconds)

Sign in to Google Analytics. Select a profile from the accounts Overview page. From that profile's Actions column, click Edit. At the top right of the "Main Website Profile Information" box, click Check Status (look at graphic below to find this link).

Step 2: Paste the code onto every page of your website (48 seconds)

I used my Blogger account to add the tracking code. All I had to do was add a "Configure HTML/JavaScript" gadget from the "Page Elements" customization section and paste the tracking code into the field.

If you use a different editor (such as Dreamweaver), just follow this rule: paste the Google Analytics code snippet into the bottom of your content, immediately before the "" tag on every page on your site you want to track. You can also use "find and replace" on the "" tag to install the code quickly on multiple pages.

Step 3: Wait 24 hours for your data

Once you've successfully implemented your tracking code, just sit back and relax. Your Website Profile summary page will tell you the status of your installation approximately 24 hours after you finish. To learn what the icons in your summary box means, read this article.

Next Steps

Once you have your tracking code up and running, here are some good next steps:

Set up goals (Help Center, Tutorial)
Link your AdWords and Google Analytics account (Help Center, Video)
Configure some profiles and filters (Blog Post)
Check out the Google Analytics YouTube Channel for tips on analysis

Do you have a complex site? You may want to consider contacting an Authorized Consultant to get expert advice, or attend a Google Analytics Seminar for Success. If you have another resources to recommend, post a comment and let us know!

Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

Google Analytics Tracking for Flash Applications

Sebastian Tonkin — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:27:00 +0000

Late last year, we announced the ability to track Adobe Flash applications using Google Analytics. Flash tracking in Google Analytics provides the same features as standard JavaScript-based tracking, including campaign, pageview and event tracking. It can be used to track Flash content such as embedded videos, branded microsites and distributed widgets, including online games.

Since the launch of Flash tracking, we've seen some great projects that make use of the technology. We wanted to give a shout out to Matthew McNeely from InsideRIA, who has created a step-by-step tutorial on how to configure Flash tracking for your site. This tutorial is geared toward advanced users, covering everything from terminology to code configuration. If you have a Flash application you'd like to track, this is a great place to start.

For more detailed information on Flash tracking in Google Analytics, visit the Google Analytics Code Site. Have a great weekend!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

Google Analytics Videos From "Vacationland"

Sebastian Tonkin — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:13:00 +0000

Back in December, we launched a YouTube Channel to make it easier to learn about Google Analytics. Now it looks like some users are giving us a run for our money! Rich Brooks of Portland, Maine has created a video series explaining how to use Google Analytics to enhance your online marketing efforts. Check it out.

It would be great to see an Analytics video from every state. Do you have a video? Add a comment and let us know!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

How Many of Your Visits are from iPhones?

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:38:00 +0000

Advanced Segmentation is one of Google Analytics' most powerful features - you can use it to slice and dice your Google Analytics data by, well, pretty much anything. We've made it a little easier to see what your iPhone visitors are doing on your site by adding a default Advanced Segment showing just visits from iPhones.

Enabling the new iPhone segment is easy: click on the drop down menu at the top right of any report next to the text "Advanced Segments", and select "Visits from iPhones" in the list of default segments. You might want to turn off "All Visits" when viewing your iPhone segment; if the percentage of total visits to your site from the iPhone is small, it will be difficult to visualize the two sets on numbers on the same graph.

Like any Advanced Segment, all of Google Analytics' reports are available; this includes AdWords performance, of course. If you use AdWords, you can now use Analytics to better analyze the performance of any campaigns that use our new iPhone and high-end mobile targeting feature. We've added the iPhone segment to get you started, but you can always create a custom Advanced Segment to compare or combine iPhone visits with other mobile operating systems; for instance, if you're targeting ads in AdWords to iPhone & high end mobile devices (which currently includes Android devices), you can create a new segment for iPhone & Android.

From the Advanced Segments drop-down, click on "Create a new advanced segment", and create a segment with 2 criteria. Drag "Operating System" under the "Systems" dimension into the target area with the dotted-line border, and type "iPhone" into the "Value" field. Click "Add 'or' statement" to get a second target area, and do the same for Android. Then, you can name your segment "High-end mobile" and see that traffic in Analytics.

Happy Tuesday, and Happy Segmenting!

Posted by Chrix Finne, Google Mobile Ads Team

Monday Back to Basics: Accounts vs Profiles

Sebastian Tonkin — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:38:00 +0000

These days, there are so many different uses for the word "accounts," and it's getting harder and harder to keep track of which definition is "in" or "out." The trend used to be to keep them for emailing or blogging, but now you can apparently use them to store a huge fortune solely for cats. See?

It can get quite confusing, which is why we’re not surprised that in January alone, over 14,000 people searched our Help Center to look up the difference between an account and a profile, two very important Analytics terms that have always remained a classic question for any analytics user.

The Difference Between an Account and a Profile

To put it simply, an account contains a collection of profiles. Note, if you have a simple website, you can probably get by without creating profiles. Profiles exist to let you do two important things.

Separate out information about specific web properties, like your blog
In this analogy the account is the house and the profiles are the rooms. You want to know everything that's happening in the house, but you also want to do special analysis just on the living room. Maybe you have some people at your company who only care about one room. By creating a profile, you can restrict access for these people to just that room.
Apply different rules and criteria for advanced analysis
Here, you're using profiles like different lenses to look at your data. Maybe you need to do super-specific analysis on just new visitors in California. You can use a profile like a microscope to zero in on just that group of users. This type of advanced analysis can also be done using advanced segments.

Profile Do's and Don'ts

Do

Give each profile a different name so that it's easily identifiable (e.g. "Blog Only")
Add the start date to the name of the profile so you'll always know how much data exists in the profile
Give reports-only access to specific users for your profiles
Create different filters for each profile so you can create different sets of data for different types of analysis
Use the search box in the "top content" report to test filters on your profiles
Filter out query parameters from your reports using profiles
Talk to an authorized consultant about profiles if you have a complicated website and you're feeling unsure

Don't

Neglect to create a master profile with all your original data for a website. This is really important!
Give users "administrator" access for specific profiles. "Administrator" access is not profile-specific. This means administrators automatically get access to every profile in the account.
Change settings on your profiles without keeping a log of changes. Otherwise things can get really confusing.

Other Resources

Any "do's" or "don'ts" we're missing? Leave a comment and we can add them!

Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

Tracking Olly

Sebastian Tonkin — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 02:37:00 +0000

Olly Hicks is attempting the ridiculous, the insane, the never-been-done. He is literally trying to row around the world. In a row boat. Alone. Well, he's mostly alone, but he's also bringing all of us with him by staying connected to the cloud and with the help of a handful of Google products. You can track his progress, read his blog, watch his videos, and even ask him a question at http://www.virginglobalrow.com. And Olly can see if anyone cares about his crazy adventure by checking out his Google Analytics reports.

So go visit his site and check out his progress. You'll notice that he's been stuck in a wind eddy and has been rowing around in circles for days and days. What a nut :) But we're with you Olly - go!

Posted by Brett Crosby, Google Analytics Team

Introducing the Google Conversion Room Blog

Sebastian Tonkin — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:47:00 +0000

Today we'd like to showcase a new blog run by our colleagues in Europe, the Google Conversion Room. Visit the Conversion Room for more tips on boosting sales, leads and conversion performance on your website using Google tools.

You can read about implementing and using Google Analytics, Website Optimizer and AdWords conversion tools. The blog highlights upcoming events and trainings in Europe and includes features from industry experts and guest bloggers.

Below we've highlighted a recent post that we think you'll find interesting. In it, Brian O'Sullivan, Google Analytics Specialist, talks about the importance of measuring Key Performance Indicators in Google Analytics to better measure and exceed your business objectives.

Why not sign up to the Conversion Room site feed so you don't miss out on any future posts! In the meantime, we'll try and give you some of the highlights here on the Google Analytics blog. For foreign language resources, you can also check out the French and Japanese versions of the Google Analytics blog

Happy tracking!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

Tips and Tools for Expanding Keywords Lists

Sebastian Tonkin — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:09:00 +0000

You can use Google Analytics to find the best keywords and shift budget to the highest converting keywords, but what if you're looking to expand your keyword lists? In this post, we are going to look at how you can leverage other free Google tools to optimize your marketing campaigns beyond Google Analytics.

1) Take a look at the best performing keywords from your Google Analytics Keyword Report.

2) Input these keywords, along with your site's URL, into the Search-based Keyword Tool to find keywords not currently in your AdWords campaign. Suggestions from this tool are particularly useful because they're specific to the site and keywords you define, and are based on actual, past Google queries.

3) For each keyword identified, you can then use Google Insights for Search -- a tool that allows you to see trends in what the world is searching for -- to see where regional interest is highest and better optimize through geotargeting.

You can also enter your top-performing keywords from Google Analytics directly into Google Insights for Search to identify the top-related and rising searches. This can help you expand your keyword lists and keep them current by staying abreast of related search trends.

These are just a few examples of how you can capitalize on the many Google tools available for improving your website ROI, so start expanding and optimizing your possibilities today!

Posted by Lauren Usui, Insights for Search Team

Mastering Motion Charts – Analyzing Spikes in Traffic

Sebastian Tonkin — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:48:00 +0000

Quick Reminder: Tuesdays on the blog we'll be focusing on advanced topics. Today's topic relates to motion charts, one of the new enterprise features on Google Analytics.

Example: Spotting a spike in traffic using the Keywords Report

Spikes often deserve special attention when analyzing your site. They can indicate interesting developments in your industry, marketing impact or press coverage. Here are a couple of examples of situations that might cause a spike.

The number of visits from a certain referrer, such as stumbleupon.com, suddenly jumps when a blog post gets attention
Your conversion rate falls to zero because of an error in your signup form
Your percentage of new visitors suddenly increases from an event sponsorship
Your bounce rate spikes due to a redirect error

You can use motion charts to spot and analyze these spikes, and then take action. Let's look at another example, a spike in visits coming from a particular search keyword. In order to follow along, your site will need to be getting at least some traffic from search engines.

Navigate to the Motion Chart

To load the Motion Chart, start by navigating to the Keywords Report:

Click on "Visualize" across the top of the Report to load the Motion Chart:

Look for Sudden Movements

Next, press the play button. Here are two shots from Keywords Motion Chart on purevisibility.com, at different points in time:

Notice how in the first screenshot, all of the bubbles in the chart hover in a line above the X-axis? This trend continues for most of the period.

In the second shot, we see an exception to the trend: on a single day in the period, the bubble for the keyword “pure visibility” moves to the very top of the chart.

Find the Cause of the Spike

What does this spike mean? On a basic level, it means more people came to your site from that keyword. A better question is "why did it occur" and "how can I get it to happen again?!"

Start by looking at your marketing & events calendar. Did any new advertising campaigns launch? Did an email go out or a conference occur? Next take a look at press coverage. Did any articles come out that day that might have drawn attention to this keyword? Did your competitors do anything significant?

In this example, it turns out that the high number of visits from the keyword "pure visibility" correlated with a local speaking event by a Pure Visibility employee.

Take Action

The company could use the information gained from using the Motion Chart in order to

Calculate ROI on the speaking engagement
Allocate more (or less) time and money to speaking engagements
Start developing custom landing pages for each speaking engagement to generate more leads
Set a conference schedule that maximizes ROI

Useful tips for analyzing traffic spikes with Motion Charts

Focus on cases where significant movement is limited to a smaller number of the total bubbles. Sometimes, multiple bubbles in the chart move significantly. You might find yourself asking, are these spikes equally important? A general guideline you can use to assess the relative importance of spikes is to look at how much the other bubbles in the chart move. If all or most of the bubbles change position drastically throughout the time period, then the spikes probably aren't very important. If a single bubble moves drastically while the others stay in roughly the same regions, you might have found something interesting.
Ask questions to find out what marketing and company events might help explain the trend. Related online (and offline) events are often the cause of traffic spikes from a segment. Keep a detailed schedule of the dates when new advertising campaigns are launched, whether paid search, TV, or print advertising. Keep track of corporate events, news, and press releases, and don't forget about events that may have impacted the industry at large.
Look to other reports to confirm the trend. In cases where you observe a spike but aren't yet sure why, dig deeper using additional Google Analytics reports. Often, a spike in traffic from one segment will be reflected by spikes for the same dates in another report. Try comparing Keyword, Geographic Region, Traffic Sources, or Conversion data as you hunt for clues. For example, doing a Date Range comparison of the days directly before and after the spike might show us a similar spike in the traffic from a particular geographic region. Additional information like this might be enough to help explain the cause of the spike.

Other Resources

With a little practice, Motion Charts can become the backbone of all your visual analysis, saving you time and helping optimize your marketing campaigns. Check out some of the following resources for more information:

What events caused traffic spikes on your site? Any helpful tips for analyzing spikes?

Posted by Jessica Hullman of Pure Visibility, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant