Specifically, the Social Engagement, Social Actions, and Social Pages reports, which were previously listed in the Audience section, can now be found in the Social section under Traffic Sources.

“Users now have access to both onsite behavior, the existing data, and off-site social activities of partners such as Google+, Digg, and Reddit among others,” says Linus Chou of Google’s Anaytics Team. “Below is a summary of how to access the data from the old reports in the new ones.”

“To access onsite activities use the Traffic Sources -> Social -> Social Plugins report,” explains Chou. “Here you see the social activities broken down by content. Selecting a specific page shows you the social activities by network for that page. Click the ‘Social Source and action’ tab highlighted in the screenshot below to see a breakdown of the itemized activities.”

Last week, Google launched a Google Analytics page on Google+. Here are a couple of the most recent updates:

Google Analytics   25 minutes ago All types of organizations, including non-profits, greatly benefit from effective use of analytics. Learn more about how +PBS and +SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) use analytics to improve their results. 3   0 Powered by socialditto

Google Analytics   23 hours ago "The big question remains however: What is the value of all that [social] activity? While reporting number of tweets and retweets are fine measures, you can go further in your measurement analysis and connect your social activity with your website activity." 3   0 Powered by socialditto

The first links to this blog post, and the second links to this Likeable article.

“We’ll be sharing the latest and greatest about Google Analytics and digital marketing overall to help you become a better practitioner and achieve more with your efforts,” says Adam Singer of the Google Analytics Team.

“Expect everything from how-to’s/tips, technical advice, interesting stats, plus some fun mixed in for good measure,” he adds. “In addition to useful updates, we’re planning to give you the opportunity to hang out live with some of the team members behind Google Analytics.”

Those hangouts will likely be where the unique value of the page comes in. Google Analytics already has a Twitter account, which provides updates, a YouTube channel with various tips and of course the Google Analytics blog where it makes product announcement. The Hangouts, however, will give users the chance to have a direct dialogue with Google about Google Analytics, and potentially get questions answered that Google may not be able to address as easily through other channels.

Google currently has a comment thread going on Google+, where users can suggest things for them to cover:

Google Analytics   2 days ago Welcome to our official Google+ page for Google Analytics!

We’re excited to share tips, trends and ideas with you related to digital measurement, marketing and analysis. If you already read our blog or follow us on Twitter, you'll want to circle us here too for unique and useful ideas.

We’ll also be featuring a regular mix of interactive opportunities to engage with our team, such as Hangouts and open discussion threads.

Have anything specific you’d like to see us cover? Let us know in the comments. 19   16 Powered by socialditto

Here’s another example of a post you might see on the page:

Google Analytics   23 hours ago Here's Google Analytics Product Marketing Manager +Ian Myszenski with her Analytics Android. They both wish you a happy Wednesday! 17   5 Powered by socialditto

With Google often releasing new features and reports (such as the new social reports) for Google Analytics, users should find the Google+ page to be a pretty useful resource.

The new tool is called the Google Analytics Easy Dashboard Library. It’s a first party tool that takes advantage of the Analytics API to create Google Analytics dashboards with minimal code and time. It should be a big help to site admins who don’t know a lot about coding as the three steps to get it up and running are super simple.

First, you’re going to want to register with the Google APIs console. After that, just copy and paste the JavaScript code that Google provides. From there you just have to configure the code to collect the data you need and the type of chart you want it displayed on.

I’m not the best with code, but even this seems super simple to me. It’s a huge advancement in making code accesible and easy for all types of people from hardcore developers and programmers to amateurs starting out with their own Web site.

Here’s an example of the code required, besides the library itself, that will create a fully featured Analytics chart.

Code:

Resulting chart:

In other good news, Google is working on ways to simplify the library even more. They will be partnering with a new group of UC Irvine students for three quarters on this new venture. If you plan on using the new tool, be sure to send feedback and bug reports to this Google Group. It’s linked to the students working on the project so they can know what it’s like to work on a widely used piece of software.

See, you’re getting simpler Analytics and furthering a child’s education. It’s a win-win for everybody.

“Now you can see all the backlink URL’s, post titles, and more right within the new Social reports.”

Here’s how they explain it:

“The concept of trackbacks, a protocol by which different sites could notify each other of referencing links, first emerged back in 2002. Since then, the blogosphere has grown in leaps and bounds, but the requirement for each site to explicitly implement this protocol has always stood in the way of adoption. If only you could crawl the web and build an accurate link graph. The good news is we already do that at Google, and are now providing this insight to Google Analytics users.”

“These reports provide another layer of social insight showing which of your content attracts links, and enables you to keep track of conversations across other sites that link to your content. Most website and blog owners had no easy mechanism to do this in the past, but we see it as another important feature for holistic social media reports. When you know what your most linked content is, it is then also much easier to replicate the success and ensure that you are building relationships with those users who actively link to you the most.”

So if this sounds like something you could use, get started with Google Analytics right away. If you want to know more, you can click here for an in-depth example of how it works. There’s a lot of resources within Google Analytics and there’s also a lot of ways to get help using them. Enjoy!

“The concept of trackbacks, a protocol by which different sites could notify each other of referencing links, first emerged back in 2002,” says Ilya Grigorik with Google’s Analytics team. “Since then, the blogosphere has grown in leaps and bounds, but the requirement for each site to explicitly implement this protocol has always stood in the way of adoption. If only you could crawl the web and build an accurate link graph. The good news is we already do that at Google, and are now providing this insight to Google Analytics users.”

“These reports provide another layer of social insight showing which of your content attracts links, and enables you to keep track of conversations across other sites that link to your content,” says Grigorik. “Most website and blog owners had no easy mechanism to do this in the past, but we see it as another important feature for holistic social media reports. When you know what your most linked content is, it is then also much easier to replicate the success and ensure that you are building relationships with those users who actively link to you the most.”

The social reports are certainly welcome to Google Analytics users, and any data Google can add to the mix is a good thing, especially since so much of it is now “not provided“.

There was actually an interesting report from Poynter this week about the impact of the “not provided” data on news sites, citing Adtrak, indicating that it’s having a huge effect. Poynter revealed that 29% of its own searches in April were not provided.

The “not provided” data, of course, comes as a result of Google’s encrypted-by-default search experience for signed in users.

Hopefully some of the new data Google is offering will help ease the pain.

“This can include measuring how quickly specific images and/or resources load, how long it takes for your site to respond to specific button clicks, timings for AJAX actions before and after onLoad event, etc. User timings will not alter your pageview count, hence, makes it the preferred method for tracking a variety of timings for actions in your site,” explains Google’s Analytics team in a blog post.

“To collect User Timings data, you’ll need to add JavaScript timing code to the interactions you want to track using the new _trackTiming API included in ga.js (version 5.2.6+) for reporting custom timings,” Google adds. “This API allows you to track timings of visitor actions that don’t correspond directly to pageviews (like Event Tracking). User timings are defined using a set of Categories, Variables, and optional Labels for better organization. You can create various categories and track several timings for each of these categories. Please refer to the developers guide for more details about the _trackTiming API.”

Users can check the report under the content section, by clicking “User Timings”. From there, you can select “Explorer,” “Performance” or “Map Overlay” for different views.

Google announced the actual Site Speed reports last month, including the Site Speed Overview. Now, you can get even more insight into how your pages are performing.

Google has said flat out that speed is a ranking factor in Google, though Google’s Matt Cutts kind of downplayed how often it really makes a huge difference. So, kind of a mixed message, though from the user experience standpoint, you’ll certainly want your pages performing well. Nobody wants to stick around on a slow site.

Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

With a little bit of planning, business owners, marketing managers and webmasters would immensely benefit. Here are few items to review prior as you plan to upgrade your site:

Tip #1 – First and foremost review what are conversions (goals, users actions) you are measuring on the current site and how it’ll apply to the new site. You might be adding video, or downloads or new lead form, these new user actions should be tracked as goals in Google Analytics. Plan for it. Or maybe, you’ll be selling online on the new site, if so, plan for eCommerce analytics to measure where your online sales will be coming from, average order value and top selling products. If you will be using Google Checkout or Paypal, let your analyst/developer know to integrate.

Tip #2 – You’ve heard that “segmentation” is really important to understand the behavior of different users (new vs. returning, customers vs. non-customers, etc.), and you want to apply this concept to the new site. Identify those segments clearly and pass on the information to your analyst/consultant/developer and they’ll help you track it on the new site.

Tip #3 – Third-Party Systems: start looking beyond just your website. Are you passing information to SalesForce, SugarCRM, or other CRMs? Look for other tags from advertising and affiliate platforms and include them in your site upgrade plan, including Google AdWords tracker, comparison shopping sites tags, doubleclick or other tags.

Tip #4 – Analytics and websites do get technical so if you are a marketers, this is a opportune time to be super nice to your technical team . Have a meeting with your analyst (or consultant) and go over your list of marketing and business measurement goals we discussed above, and ask them to plan the Google Analytics Tracking Code implementation for sub-domains or cross-domain tracking, or if you are using events or firing virtual pageviews, they might need to make updates necessary to maintain the same data collection method. Also, have your technical team pay close attention to URLs/redirects, especially for landing pages, redirects can create all sort of data mess if not handled properly.

Note: if the URL structure and page naming convention is changing, one or more of the following could be impacted, so plan for the necessary updates at the time of site upgrade: filters, goals, e-commerce variables, custom variables, advanced segments, custom alerts, custom reports with filters, dashboards with filters.

Site Launch – Congratulations!

You are very excited about the your new site launch, and you should be. Few more steps and you’ll be ready to celebrate!

Again, marketers and webmaster must work very closely here.

Tip #5 - First and foremost, and right after the site launched or if you had a site in a staging environment, you want to validate that the analytic code is on all your pages (turn to your favorite site scan software). Pay extra attention to key pages (landing pages/static pages and conversion pages such as thank you pages, form completion pages, e-commerce purchase complete pages, etc.). And while you are at it, run a quick hostname report. In Google Analytics this can be found under Demographics -> Technology -> Network to ensure you are collecting data only from your production web properties.

Tip #6 – You might be experiencing slow load times when you launch your new site for a variety of reasons. Don’t despair, GA has some powerful reports that come to the rescue. Discuss the Site Speed Reports (under Content) and identify and fix page or server issues.

Tip #7 – Go the GA reports and set up a date range comparison (equal number of days, and days of week before and after launch), then monitor your most important metrics. Here are some starting points: under Audience, run a report on traffic/key metrics/conversion by browser. Any major peaks and valleys pre/post site launch? If so, immediately inform your webmaster, there are potential issues with browser compatibility. Also, examine your traffic sources and goal conversion carefully. If the domain/sub-domain configuration wasn’t set up properly, you’ll see all sort of issues with self-referring traffic, visit inflations and other side effects. Don’t forget to review your Pages report for any error pages (404 pages) that site visitors might be experiencing.

Tip #8 - Automate. Yes, let Google Analytics do all the heavy lifting for you. Set up Custom Alerts (Intelligent Events) on all vital metrics. Without needing a degree in Statistics, GA will report to you if and when any of these metrics fall outside the norm. This is very powerful and a great time-saver. You’ll be notified when there is an issue (or a good thing) and you’ll act on the finding accordingly.

Tip #9 – Annotate – yes, you’ll few weeks down the road, you’ll forget what changes you made on your site. So take few minutes to annotate (by date) when major changes occurred, day of site launch, etc. Your colleagues (or consultants) who come after you, will be very thankful for the context you’d provided.

Note: while the above tips focus on analytics and maintain data quality, site migration or upgrade planning should include SEO and SEM planning. Look for the for search engine traffic and landing pages and report drops in ranking, traffic, engagement or conversion issues to your search marketing team.

Equipped with the above nine tips, you’ll be closer to a hassle-free outcome. By following these suggestions, your site will not only have that fresh new look you develop, but you’ll also have the necessary data you need to measure and improve the site and marketing performance and keep your visitors (and boss) very happy!

Editor’s Note: For a comprehensive checklist on analytics tips for a hassle-free site upgrade and migration, check out Feras’ recent post on the E-Nor Digital Marketing Optimization blog.

From large e-commerce sites to small blogs,” Google Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora says, ten million businesses rely on Google Analytics.

He mentioned that there have been several new features introduced recently. The new social reports, for example.

He didn’t talk about it, but it looks like Google+ Page data is coming to Google Analytics soon, as well.

View all of our Google Analytics coverage here.

Small business use of Google Apps is “on fire,” as well, according to Arora.

More on today’s earnings report here.

For a long while, 500px offered an “Awesome Membership” for $50 a year, twice as much as Flickr Pro at $24.95 annually. So now, for $19.95, one can obtain the pro-level features at 500px for $5 less. According to the site, Plus features include unlimited uploads, a personal store, unlimited collections and advanced statistics. The only thing missing from the Awesome Membership is a personalized portfolio, featuring customizable domains and the inclusion of Google Analytics. Yahoo’s Flickr has yet to offer much by way of targeted maketing, and appears to be catering more towards social networking, putting 500px in a good spot as a choice for photo professionals and freelancers.

500px, sporting a front page reminiscent of Pinterest‘s interface, was founded in 2009, and grew to over 3 million registered users by 2011. Each user gets a ‘flow’ page, where his/her activity on the site appears. Followers can rate user pictures, with highly voted ones ending up in the ‘popular’ field. Other categories making up the sharing community include editor’s choice, upcoming, fresh and market – these represent highest rated, trendy, newest and for sale.

Arvid Bux at DutchCowboys.nl (via State of Search) blogged about a presentation Google gave, indicating that you will soon be able to connect your Google+ Page with Google Analytics.

WebSonic posted the actual slide, revealing the news. It says the feature is “coming soon”:

Last month, Google announced that it would soon be releasing new social reports in Google Analytics. Google said the reports were aimed at helping users: identify the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measure how they lead to conversions, understand social activities happening on and off site to help you optimize user engagement and increase key performance indicators, and make better, data-driven decisions in your social strategies.

There is a Social Sources report and an activity stream, which does include data from a lot of places, but lacks some key social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon.

Since the announcement of the social reports, Google has also announced new site speed reports, as well as new email and PDF exporting features.