Google Analytics Blog

Multilingual Urchin 6.602 Now Available

2009-12-16T16:53:00.000-08:00

Join us in welcoming Urchin 6.602 to the world, the long-awaited multilingual upgrade to our "run-it-yourself" web analytics package. This release adds support for all 11 of our supported languages, including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Dutch, Japanese, Chinese (both simplified and traditional), and Korean.

Read the complete Changelist for all the details, or visit our Download page to get the goods.

Urchin 6.602 also includes a bunch of significant new features, including:

Enhanced LDAP integration (more protocols supported)

1-Click Installer -- no need for an "outboard" database anymore

GeoDB user adjustments -- don't need the full GeoDB? Run fast & light with Urchin 6.602

Updated compression utility -- allows data archives greater than 2GB

Option to select which profiles (and their overview data) to display on users' default "home" screen (aka, roll-up report)
Bing.com support (hooray!)

...and lots of bug fixes and documentation updates

Urchin 6.600, released in June 2009, was a major upgrade, so you may want to revisit that blog post for more info.

Urchin 6.602 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!

Urchin 6.6's built-in Keyword Generator Tool makes managing your campaigns a lot easier.

Posted by Scott Crosby, Urchin Software Manager

New Google Analytics API Features

2009-12-14T15:17:00.000-08:00

Over the past few months we've received a lot of great feedback from our developers about what they wanted to see in the Google Analytics API, and it included adding access to Google Analytics newest and most powerful features, such as advanced segments, custom variables and more. Today we want to let you know about improvements to the Google Analytics Data Export API, including the following highlights (all the details of this release can be found on our public changelog and public notify group):

Support for Advanced Segments

With advanced segmentation, you can look beyond your aggregated data and peer into the nuances of traffic and visitor activity on your site. For example, the average time on site for all visits could be 60 seconds, but when you segment by country, you might learn that average time on site of visits from Germany is over 2 minutes.

We've added two new ways to use advanced segments through the API:

Create them on the fly by specifying their expression directly through an API query.

Use advanced segments created in the Google Analytics web interface through the API.

This video describes exactly what advanced segments do and how you can use them with the API.

Goal 5-20 and Configuration Data

With the recent Google Analytics launch enabling up to 20 goals, many of you asked for access to this valuable data. Good call! So now, you can access 48 new metrics around goal performance. We've also added all the goal configuration data, including name, type, and step names for each profile.

Take a look at this video describing how to work with goal configuration data in the API.

Custom Variables

Custom variables are powerful new ways to describe visitors, visits and pages within Google Analytics. In this new release, we've added 10 new dimensions to access custom variable data. In addition, every custom variable that you've used is now available through the Account Feed.

We've updated all our documentatation at http://code.google.com/apis/analytics. Please continue to give us feedback to improve our product through our public google group. We can't wait to see the new apps that come from developers using this data. We're hoping that you spend your holiday tinkering with it :-)

Enjoy!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

Holiday Bonus: More Great Features

2009-12-07T11:00:00.000-08:00

We all love the holiday season, and so now, here are a few reasons to love it even more! A few weeks ago, we announced a set of powerful, flexible, and intelligent features. Today, at SES Chicago, Phil Mui announced additional features that build on these same themes to make your life as an analyst easier. We hope you'll enjoy them.

Annotations

Do you ever wonder about an inexplicable change in your traffic? Or forget exactly when you launched something, or who was responsible? After scratching your head, did you have to chase down different departments in your company or go digging through old emails to get an answer?

For instance:

Was that dip in traffic because the servers went down?
When did the new display ads campaign launch?
Who's responsible for the checkout page redesign and when did it go live?

Running around asking everyone from marketing, IT, and product doesn't scale. More and more large companies are using Google Analytics, so we wanted to cut down on the mileage you need to cover to account for everything that happens to your website and online marketing.

This week, the wild goose chase is over -- you can now easily denote unexplained dips or spikes and figure out "what happened" with the launch of Annotations in Google Analytics.

Annotations allows any user with access to a Google Analytics profile to leave shared or private notes right on the over-time graph. Building upon the concept of bringing Intelligence to data, Annotations complements existing anomaly detection by capturing the tribal intelligence of your company, which tends to be the most expensive and easily lost resource of all. A simple note from a colleague can save hours of real work (and frustration) for an analyst who is tasked to explain a usually dry set of numbers. This short video will show you how to use Annotations.

Taking its usefulness even further: Annotations can become your central repository, or logbook, for all online marketing and website design actions within your business. So even if you have multiple marketing teams, agencies, or webmasters, or if you have employee churn or other disruptions, you can always see which events may have caused conversions to increase or decrease. No wonder this has been one of the top requested features in Analytics for such a long time!

Custom Variables Now Available In Advanced Segments

Custom Variables provide you the power and flexibility to customize Google Analytics and collect the unique site usage data most important to your business. In Google Analytics, not only are you able to define multiple custom variables, each custom variable is a name-value pair and can be assigned one of 3 scopes: page, session, or visitor. Each custom variable name and each value is an arbitrary string defined by you pertinent to your business needs.

When we announced Multiple Custom Variables in October, the only way to view metrics on these Custom Variables then was to open the standard "Custom Variables" report in the Visitors section. This week, a user can create an advanced segmentation based on any key, value, as well as key-value combination of all Custom Variables. In other words, if you've created a Custom Variable such as "Logged In Member", you can also create an advanced segment based on that variable and see it across all of your reports.

The ability to create visit segments based on Custom Variables is critical in maximizing the full potential of Custom Variables. Users can now slice and dice their metrics by decorating their site traffic with the appropriate key-value pairs.

Custom Variables Available In Custom Reports

You can also create Custom Reports with any of the key or value dimensions associated with any Custom Variable. Now, you can see how a segment defined by Custom Variables behaves along any of the metrics available in Google Analytics.

New Analytics Tracking Code Setup Wizard

One of the more daunting tasks in setting up analytics on any site is to manually configure the tracking code for specialized situations, such as multiple subdomains, cross-domain tracking, mobile web tracking, PHP sites, campaign tagging, etc.

Well, fear no more. When you create a profile, you'll notice a new tracking code setup wizard in Google Analytics. This wizard automatically generates the appropriate tracking code according to the setup options specified by you.

New Version of The Analytics API

Later this week, there will be a separate announcement about a set of very exciting features to our Analytics API. Here's a little preview: Support for Advanced Segmentation will now be available through the API.

In addition, new data dimensions and metrics will be made available, including those in our recently announced features.

Enjoy -- and happy holidays from the Google Analytics team!

Posted by Jeff Gillis and Phil Mui, Google Analytics Team

SES Chicago Next Week

2009-12-04T14:23:00.000-08:00

Come to the windy city next week and catch Google Analytics' fearless Senior Product Manager Phil Mui in action at the Search Engine Strategies Chicago conference. Phil will be presenting at two sessions on Monday at SES:

MUST SEE: What's New and Exciting with Google Analytics - Monday at 12:45pm at the networking lunch which we're sponsoring. He'll cover the latest feature launch, AND - he might announce some new features. You never know with Phil. We really hope you can make this session - you'll want to share it with your friends, literally (hint, hint). We're not saying anything more.
Phil will also participate in a panel called How to Turn Your Web Analytics Into a Money-Making Machine along with Bryan Eisenberg and Jim Sterne, founder of the Web Analytics Association and the eMetrics conference.

Also, the AdWords team will be there in force, presenting the Google Ads Factory Tour, a series of sessions designed to give advertisers practical tips they can use immediately to improve search and display performance. They'll also be holding a session on AdWords Optimization Tools as well as on The Next Generation of AdWords Bidding: Conversion Optimizer. Read more at the AdWords blog post, and register for SES here.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Webinar: Google Analytics' Newest Features

2009-12-02T15:52:00.000-08:00

As of this week, all the new Google Analytics features we recently announced should be available in all accounts! (And just yesterday, we announced one more - a new, asynchronous tracking code snippet.)

If you missed the announcements or are curious about the features you're now seeing, join us in this upcoming webinar, happening next week on Wednesday. We'll provide an overview and demonstration of the features and provide tips on some best practices and uses. You'll learn how the following features have added more power, flexibility and intelligence to Google Analytics' enterprise class capabilities:

Engagement Goals
Expanded Mobile Reporting
Advanced Table Filtering
Unique Visitor Metric
Multiple Custom Variables
Sharing Advanced Segments & Custom Reports
Analytics Intelligence
Custom Alerts

When: Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Time: 10 - 11 am, PST

Register here.

There will also be an opportunity for Q&A so please ask your questions beforehand through Google Moderator.

We hope you'll come learn more about the latest features .... and we may even have a few extra surprises to share then, too! Hope to see you there.

Posted by Dai Pham, Google Analytics Team

Google Analytics launches asynchronous tracking

2009-12-01T10:26:00.000-08:00

Google Analytics now provides a new Asynchronous Tracking Code snippet as an alternate way to track your website!

Think of the asynchronous tracking code snippet as a script that uses a "separate lane" to handle part of the processing of your webpage. As the number of cars (or in this case, scripts on your webpage) increases, the asynchronous tracker uses this lane to reduce webpage load time. Websites that use many scripts or rely on rich media content will especially benefit from this new method, but even lightweight sites will see improvements.

The new tracking snippet offers the following benefits:

Faster tracking code load times for your web pages due to improved browser execution
Enhanced data collection and accuracy
Elimination of tracking errors from dependencies when the JavaScript hasn't fully loaded

The asynchronous tracking code is now in Beta and available to all Google Analytics users. Using the new tracking code is optional: your existing Google Analytics code will continue to work as-is. But if you want to improve your webpage load times and fine-tune the accuracy of your Analytics data, then we think you'll love this new option.

Learn more about this new tracking code on our Analytics Help Center and get started on Google Code.

Posted by Jesse Savage, Google Analytics Team

Episode # 3 - Rapid Fire Web Analytics Q and A with Avinash and Nick

2009-11-25T13:35:00.000-08:00

This is the third video in our recent Rapid Fire series where you share your most burning questions via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them!

Generally we want to focus on your questions about key metrics and analysis techniques, but this week we get a little technical.

In this episode we discuss:

How to group referrals from common sources
How to setup Google Analytics to track multiple web sites and view all the aggregate data in one profile
Strategies to track websites that support different languages
The value of using Google Analytics on You Tube partner channels
Troubleshooting discrepancies in Google Analytics Data
Best practices for implementing E-commerce tracking for E-commerce sites
Simplifying customizing the date range in GA
How to track segments of users who interact with internal referrals/cross sell campaigns
Tracking Social Media campaigns

Here are links to resources we discussed in the video:

If you found this helpful, we'd love to hear your comments.

If you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question or vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site. Avinash and I will answer your latest questions in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.

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

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

Depth and Discovery: Powering Visualizations with the Google Analytics API

2009-11-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

We're always really excited to see what developers are building with Google Analytics. Here's an amazing visualization using the API from our friends at Juice Analytics. Now, this is what we're talking about when we say this stuff is "Off the charts!" (The API team t-shirt slogan). :-)

At Juice, we work with web analytics APIs large and small, from Google, comScore and Omniture. The Google Analytics API is our favorite. It powers the world's best, most widely deployed analytics site. And it powers Juice products like Concentrate (innovative search analytics) and Vasco de Gapi (a tool for exploring the Google Analytics API).

We were approached by the Google Analytics API team to explore new ways of looking at data with the API, and we were excited by the possibilities. We've been working on our own visualization framework, JuiceKit, that integrates the power of the Flare Visualization Library with Adobe Flex.

The result is Analytics Visualizations, two visualizations powered by the Google Analytics API that are free to use. You just need a Google account with access to Google Analytics data to explore your own data. Here are the details about the visualizations, called Referrer Flow and Keyword Tree.
Referrer Flow
Curious about what sites are linking to you and what content is benefitting the most? The Referrer Flow visualization answers those question and shows how results change over time. It's a stream of daily treemaps showing pageviews and bounce rates for various groupings of your website's pages. You can group by combinations of page title, referrer and url. Here is a brief video introduction:

Clicking on the treemap will filter all the data by the page, referrer or url that you clicked on. Click again to clear your filter.

Keyword Tree

A list of top keywords isn't enough to really understand how people are searching and finding your site. The Keyword Tree visualization displays the most frequently used search keywords and how they are used together. Here's a video overview:

You'll see a frequently used search term at the center and the words and phrases that are most often used in combination with that word. Pick a different starting word by typing into the box in the upper right or selecting from the top word across the bottom of the screen. The words are sized by their frequency of use and colored by bounce rate (or % new visitors or average time on site). Roll over a word to see details about that combination of connected words.

Depth and Discovery

In designing these visualizations we focused on the question: how can we let users uncover the unexpected? That means designing targeted visualizations focused on limited well-defined issues. The Referrer Flow monomaniacally focuses on a single question "What pages are people viewing on your site and where are they coming from?" The Keyword Tree is laser-focused on word ordering and what that means for keyword performance.

The Google Analytics reporting tool is a great general-purpose reporting solution. It gives the advanced users everything they need to answer specific questions. However, its generality means it has limited ability to focus on two issues; depth and discovery.

The Google Analytics API is Google's solution to this problem. It's an opportunity both for businesses like ours that can create new ways of analyzing data, and for large sites that can use the API for integration, custom analytics, and more.

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

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

An Integration With Feedburner

2009-11-17T16:51:00.000-08:00

The FeedBurner team has just announced an integration with Google Analytics. We know what many of you are saying. "About time!" We'll take it.

If you are using both Google Analytics and FeedBurner, you will automatically see campaign attribution for item clicks tracked by your AdSense For Feeds or your Google FeedBurner account. To read more and get details, please see the blog post here and take a look at the below image:

It works in the same way as URL tagging. You can see how many people click through to your site from the content sent by you in your feeds. FeedBurner is now automatically inserting Google Analytics tracking codes into the URLs of your items, or content. For instance, if you publish a blog and a subscriber reads it and then clicks through to your site, you will see that the source of that visit is Feedburner. And as you can see, it gives even more granular information, such as the type of feed reading software or email.

Taking a step back. What is a feed? From the help article, feeds "are a way for websites large and small to distribute their content well beyond just visitors using browsers. Feeds permit subscription to regular updates, delivered automatically via a web portal, news reader, or in some cases good old email. Feeds also make it possible for site content to be packaged into "widgets," "gadgets," mobile devices, and other bite-sized technologies that make it possible to display blogs, podcasts, and major news/sports/weather/whatever headlines just about anywhere." The most popular types of feed formats are RSS and Atom feeds.

If you're publishing content like this blog, then feeds are probably half the story. Feed subscribers are a very important audience to be aware of. If people are really interested in what you have to say, they'll subscribe to your feed or RSS so they can be automatically updated every time you publish new content. They don't want to miss it, and don't want to have to keep visiting your page to check if you've published new content. FeedBurner is the way you can measure how many people are using your feed and who they are. It's could be called Google Analytics for feeds :-) Or Google Analytics could be called web...analytics...burner?

Anyway, FeedBurner shows you not only how many subscribers your feed has, but also metrics like geography and reach, with a breakdown by each piece of content (or "item") you publish. It also tells whether they clicked on a link in that content or went to the actual piece of content on your site. You can also see where the subscriber is reading your feed; whether in email or some kind of feed reader, such as Google Reader.

Another thing to be aware of is AdSense For Feeds, which allows you to monetize your feeds by placing AdSense ads in them.

This integration is the first step towards using these two very similar tools together. You still need to log in to FeedBurner to actually see how many subscribers you have and the rich detail around your feed usage FeedBurner provides.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

New Feature Spotlight: Analytics Intelligence

2009-11-13T09:43:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

New Feature Spotlight: Advanced Filters

2009-11-11T13:27:00.000-08:00

Here is another in-depth look at one of our recently announced new features: Advanced Filters (or Advanced Table Filters), written by the excellent team at LunaMetrics, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant.

For the daily user, Advanced Filters may be the most useful new feature of the bundle of new features, in terms of streamlining your actual process once you access a report and are actively doing analysis. They are found at the bottom of the table in any report. As a habitual poweruser, I've been clamoring for it for years, and it has made my process so much simpler. It's the equivalent of replacing a screwdriver with a powerdrill.

You no longer need to export your data to slice and dice it to see your desired subsets. Now, you can set a filter while looking at a certain report to get the information you want, without having to exit and create a filter or advanced segment. Within seconds, you can whittle down a massive data table to look at a subset that is important to you.

One example already given in this tutorial video is to show just the keywords that have a low bounce rate (less than 30%) and that referred at least 25 visits. Right away, you've found high value and high traffic keywords. We're using this feature almost every time we look at a data table in a report. It makes you feel much more command over your data.

Here are three more interesting uses of the new Advanced Table Filtering:

Looking for specific non-branded keywords
Sometimes, it helps to see keywords that contain a certain word or phrase, but exclude the brand name. Taking a company called DeLallo Italian Foods, for example. If I wanted to see all the keywords that contain the word Italian food but exclude the brand name DeLallo, I could easily use the advanced filters for this. Previously, I would have done this using regular expressions in the filter:
Filter Keyword: containing ^(?=.*italian food)(?!.*(delallo)).*
No more! Now, we don't need to do this! Now, it is so easy with the advanced filters. Just filter for Keyword containing Italian food and excluding DeLallo.
And presto! Your report is updated. And, at any time, you can edit this filter to further refine it, or delete it altogether.

Landing Pages, Sorted by Bounce Rate

Has this ever happened to you - you're looking at your Top Landing Pages report, and you sort by bounce rate, only to have a bunch of pages with 1 entrance clogging the top of the report? With advanced filters, you can filter out those pages with a low number of entrances to get a better look at which landing pages with significant traffic have a high bounce rate. All you have to do is filter by Entrances greater than 50 (or whatever threshhold floats your bounce-rate-boat).

Top Content, Sorted by $ Index

Another similar use for sites with e-commerce or a goal value enabled is when you're looking at the Top Content report, sorted by $ Index. What you're trying to find are the pages that have the highest value - those that are viewed during a visit that results in a conversion. Again, it's common to get a lot of pages at the top that have a low number of pageviews.

First, it helps to filter out those pages that have a low number of pageviews. But once you do that, you'll likely see the pages with the highest $ Index are pages of your shopping cart or checkout process. We can filter out these pages with the advanced filters too - just add a new condition below your first filter that excludes pages that contain the word cart (or checkout, etc.) in the URL.

These three examples give you a taste of Advanced Table Filtering for your analytics, but they just scratch the surface. Once you explore your own analytics, I’m sure you’ll find many more uses of this flexible and powerful new feature. You'll really notice it's use when you find you're happily lingering for 5 extra minutes, using this new interface feature to easily gain insights and ask questions that would've taken you an hour before and possibly a data export. Pure wizardry. :)

Posted by Jim Gianoglio, LunaMetrics, A Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

New Free Google Analytics API Dashboard Application

2009-11-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

Some of the other available features include:

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

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

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

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

2009-11-04T15:21:00.000-08:00

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

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

In this episode we discuss:

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

Here are links to the resources discussed in the video:

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

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

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

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

New Feature Spotlight: Google Analytics for Mobile Apps

2009-11-03T10:15:00.000-08:00

Last week, we introduced expanded mobile reporting features in Google Analytics. To help developers, this launch includes features that make it easy to see how people are using specific parts of their iPhone and Android applications. The same Google Analytics reports that provide insights into website traffic and engagement are now available for mobile apps.

As with websites, there are two basic categories of user interaction you can track: pageviews and events. Since mobile apps don't contain HTML pages, developers simply determine when their apps should trigger pageview requests. Google Analytics then aggregates this data in the Content reports to display the number of visits, session length and bounce rates. The data gives insight into how your users interacted with the app.

Developers can also track visitor actions that don't correspond directly to pageviews using Event Tracking. These user actions can include views of embedded videos, button clicks, downloads and more. App developers can then use this data to understand which features are most popular and inform decisions about which features should be promoted or prioritized for further development.

Redfin, an online brokerage for buying and selling homes, recently tested Google Analytics on their mobile application. Watch this video to learn more about their experience:

To get started using Google Analytics to understand and optimize how people use your iPhone or Android mobile app, check out the SDK and technical documentation.

Posted by Meredith Papp, Google Mobile Ads Team

Google Analytics API on App Engine Treemap Visualization

2009-10-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

It's Friday, time for some fun! Advanced API analytics fun :)

Here is a captivating way to look at your Google Analytics data in a Treemap visualization. You can visualize your own data with our live demo. (Note: IE currently not supported for visualization part.)

click to enlarge

And, here is a video explaining how to look at the Treemap visualization and how to use it.

The goal of this example was to teach people how to use the Google Analytics API on App Engine in Java, as well as to demonstrate how to use both OAuth and AuthSub along with the App Engine's various services. The code looked great, but the output was a boring HTML table. So we used some open source tools to transform the table into a pretty tree map visualization, which is also useful in noticing interesting metrics.

All the code has been open sourced on Google Project hosting. Also, here's an article describing how this application works making it easy for developers to use this example as a starting point for new data visualizations and other Google Data projects.

For the data retrieval part, we used the App Engine Java SDK and the Google Analytics Data Export API Java Client Library to retrieve data from Google Analytics. The example code implements both unsigned AuthSub and registered OAuth authorization methods allowing developers to get up and running quickly in their dev environment and later switch to a secure authorization method in production environments. The application also uses the Model-View-Controller pattern, making it flexible and allowing developers to extend the code for new applications (e.g. adding support for other Google Data APIs).

And lastly, for the visualization part, we used the open-sourced Protovis SVG Visualization Library to create the Treemap. This JavaScript library is maintained by the Stanford Visualization Group and excels at creating brand new visualizations from a data set (in this case a boring HTML table). To handle all of the interactions, including rollover, tooltips and slider controls, we used JQuery. Here is the JavaScript source for the visualization part of the sample.

Enjoy!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

p.s. If you have created any cool new visualizations using the Google Analytics Data Export API,email us so we can highlight them as well.

New Feature Spotlight: Engagement Goals, Goal Sets and 20 Goals Per Profile

2009-10-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

Last week, we announced a bundle of new enterprise-class features in Google Analytics. Over the next few weeks, we'll do posts which go into depth on each new feature. Here is the first, which goes into detail on the expanded and improved goals in Google Analytics (related video). It's very clearly and insightfully written by our friends at WebShare, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, with links to related help center articles.

You can probably think of more than four things you'd like your visitors to be doing when they visit your website. Until last week, Google Analytics had limited the number of configurable goals per profile to just four. Sure, you can create 50 profiles and thus track up to 200 goals, but having to switch back and forth in your reports can be a bit cumbersome. Well, here's some very welcome news: comprehensive site performance measurement just got easier. A newly released feature in Google Analytics now lets you create up to 20 conversion goals per profile, including new Engagement goals.

What is it?

Each profile now can be configured with up to four “Goal Sets”, each capable of housing five individual goals. In your Traffic Sources reports, each goal set appears as its own tab (see screenshot below) and the goals associated with the set are listed out in plain text, just as before, to show you how your visitors are accomplishing the objectives of your site. (Click any image to enlarge it.)

In the screenshot above, you can see that Goal Set 1 is comprised of five individual goals. Look in the white boxes under "Goal Set 1" and you'll see "Goal 1: Newsletter Signup", "Goal 2: Contact Us Page", "Goal 3: New User Registration", "Goal 4: Webinar Signup" and "Goal 5: Catalog Request". Goal Sets 2, 3, 4 contain various other goals, and a simple click on the tab puts the numbers you need right at your fingertips.

When viewing your Goal reports, you'll now see up to 20 individual goals in the “Select Goal:” dropdown list, so you can quickly and efficiently look at trend data, funnel visualizations and more:

Setting Up Your Goals

Goal configuration has a new look which follows the goal set organization. For each goal set, you can add up to five individual goals (the remaining number of goals in each set are conveniently noted for you). To add a new goal, just click on the “Add goal” link for the goal set you wish to add a goal to.

With all of these new goals to configure, it's a good practice to use your goal sets to group your goals strategically. For example, you might use Goal Set 1 to track a set of e-commerce related goals such as Successful Purchase, Added Item to Shopping Cart, Deleted Item from Shopping Cart, and things of that nature. For your next set, you might want to track interaction goals such as Newsletter Signup, Followed us on Twitter, Logged In, etc... The sky's the limit, but make sure to consider how you'll want to use your reports when configuring your new goals.

New Goal Types - Engagement Goals

Another change you'll notice is the addition of two new goal types called Engagement goals: Time on Site and Pages/Visit. Previously goals could only be counted when a particular page URL was visited, but Engagement goals will allow a conversion to be recorded when a visitor reaches a certain threshold of involvement with your site. For instance, do you have an ad-serving site and want to record a conversion when a visitor has seen 10 pages? Now you can. Or, are you serving up audio/video or longer content pieces and want get an idea of how long people are listening, viewing or reading? A Time on Site goal can help.

Time on Site allows you to specify a greater than or less than value of time spent on your site as one of your goals. The following goal would fire once a visit passes five minutes in length:

Pages/Visit allows you to set a greater than, equal to or less than value to a pages-per-visit value. The following goal would fire upon the 6th pageview of the visit:

As always, if you'd like a monetary value to be assigned to any of your goals and used in cost and revenue calculations, just enter the amount in the "Goal Value" field.

Note: funnels do not apply for Engagement type goals. Speaking of funnels...

Goal Funnels

One more change to the goal creation page is the goal funnel creation step. The setup is collapsed by default (as it is optional), but if your URL Destination goals follow a path and you'd like to see how users are entering, following and abandoning that path, this is something that you can take advantage of. To create a funnel, just click on the “+ Yes, create a funnel for this goal” link and start entering the URL path to your goal, adding up to 10 steps.

Happy Goaling!

With this new addition to Google Analytics, opportunities to understand and then cater to your visitors abound. So the question is, how will you take advantage of this for your site?

Posted by WebShare, A Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

Google Analytics IQ: Proof of Qualification Now Available!

2009-10-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Google Analytics Now More Powerful, Flexible And Intelligent

2009-10-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

Today, we're announcing a new set of Google Analytics features which builds on last year's enterprise-class feature launch. Some add more power to existing capabilities. Others provide new flexibility to further customize and adapt Google Analytics according to the needs of your enterprise. Finally, we'll introduce Analytics Intelligence. Resist the temptation to skip ahead. We wouldn't want you to miss anything. :-)

Powerful.

Power-users have asked us to add even more data manipulation and analysis features to Google Analytics. We've been listening, and are adding the latest power features to expand Google Analytics enterprise-class capabilities.

Engagement Goals..and more of them! Two new goal types allow you to measure user engagement and branding success on your site. The new goal types allow you to set thresholds for Time on Site and Pages per Visit. Furthermore, you can now define up to 20 goals per profile. Watch this short video on goals to learn more.

Expanded Mobile Reporting: Google Analytics now tracks mobile websites and mobile apps so you can better measure your mobile marketing efforts. If you're optimizing content for mobile users and have created a mobile website, Google Analytics can track traffic to your mobile website from all web-enabled devices, whether or not the device runs JavaScript. This is made possible by adding a server side code snippet to your mobile website. To install the code snippet, select "Advanced" from the "Add new profile" setup wizard within Google Analytics, and select the radio button, "A site built for a mobile phone". We support PHP, Perl, JSP and ASPX sites in this release. Of course, you can still track visits to your regular website coming from high-end, Javascript enabled phones.

iPhone and Android mobile application developers can now also track how users engage with apps, just as with tracking engagement on a website. What's more, for apps on Android devices, usage can be tied back to ad campaigns: from ad to marketplace to download to engagement. Check out the SDKs and technical documentation on mobile apps tracking to get started. And coming soon, you'll be able to see breakout data on mobile devices and carriers in the new Mobile reports in the Visitors section!

Advanced Analysis Features: Advanced Table Filtering feature is being added to the arsenal of power tools you can use to perform advanced data analysis. Earlier this year we announced Pivoting and Secondary Dimensions. Using Secondary Dimensions, you could, for example, see revenue metrics for city + keyword combinations. So, you could see how much revenue your site received from visitors in Boston who searched for "bean bag". You could then "pivot" by source and see revenue by search engine for each of these city+keyword combinations. Here's a quick tutorial video.

Now we're adding Advanced Table Filtering. This allows you to filter the rows in a table based on different metric conditions. Watch the following video to see an example of how you could filter thousands of keywords to identify just the keywords with a bounce rate less than 30% and that referred at least 25 visits.

Together, these three power features let you perform in-depth, on the fly analysis without having to export your data to spreadsheet tools.

Unique Visitor Metric: Now when you create a Custom Report, you can select Unique Visitors as a metric against any dimensions in Google Analytics. This allows marketers to see how many actual visitors (unique cookies) make up any user-defined segment.

Flexible.

Every enterprise has unique web analytics tracking and reporting needs. Today, we're enhancing two of the tools that organizations use to adapt and customize Google Analytics. We're adding multiple custom variables to the tracking API and making it easy to share Custom Reports and Advanced Segments.

Multiple Custom Variables: Custom Variables provide you the power and flexibility to customize Google Analytics and collect the unique site usage data most important to your business. If you've used the _setVar() function, the concept of custom variables will be familiar, but we've taken it a step further: you can now define and track visitors according to visitor attributes (e.g. member vs. non-member), session attributes (e.g. logged-in or not), and by page-level attributes (e.g. viewed Sports section). Use custom variables to classify any number of interactions and behaviors on your site. This powerful customization capability makes Google Analytics even more flexible and able to meet the needs of the most demanding enterprises. Multiple custom variables will become available to all accounts in the coming weeks but you can start learning more about them now.

Sharing Segments and Custom Report Templates: You may have recently noticed in your accounts the ability to administer and share Custom Reports and Advanced Segments, features we announced earlier this year. Have a Custom Report you created just for the Sales Team? Simply share the URL link for that report to anyone who has an Analytics account and a pre-formatted Sales report template will automatically be imported. You can also now select which profiles you want to share or hide your Advanced Segments and Custom Reports with.

Intelligent.

Now, for the new feature you've been waiting for! Wouldn't it be great if Google Analytics could tell you what to pay attention to? Beginning today, it can.

Analytics Intelligence: We're launching the initial phase of an algorithmic driven Intelligence engine to Google Analytics. Analytics Intelligence will provide automatic alerts of significant changes in the data patterns of your site metrics and dimensions over daily, weekly and monthly periods. For instance, Intelligence could call out a 300% surge in visits from YouTube referrals last Tuesday or let you know bounce rates of visitors from Virginia dropped by 70% two weeks ago. Instead of you having to monitor reports and comb through data, Analytics Intelligence alerts you to the most significant information to pay attention to, saving you time and surfacing traffic insights that could affect your business. Now, you can spend your time actually taking action, instead of trying to figure out what needs to be done.

Custom Alerts make it possible for you to tell Google Analytics what to watch for. You can set daily, weekly, and monthly triggers on different dimensions & metrics, and be notified by email or right in the user interface when the changes actually occur.

Watch this video on Analytics Intelligence and then look for the feature to appear in your account in the coming weeks!

That's the summary. We're excited to share more details about each of these features, so stay tuned! We'll discuss each feature in turn over the next few days.

Posted by Dai Pham, Google Analytics Team

P.S. We're not the only ones with exciting news today! Google Website Optimizer also announced some big features - over time charts and a Website Optimizer API! Check out the Google Website Optimizer blog to learn more.

2 Upcoming Events: Chicago and Melbourne

2009-10-20T05:31:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, we like to shout out events that our Google Analytics Authorized Consultants are doing for the community.

Seminar For Success In Melbourne
Two weeks ago we mentioned some upcoming Seminars For Success which are all day seminars on Google Analytics. Here's one more Seminar For Success in Melbourne, Australia this Thursday and Friday, October 22 and 23, hosted by Mangold Sengers, a Google Analytics and Website Optimizer Authorized Consultant.

Thursday will be a Google Analytics Introduction and User Training, and Friday will be an Advanced Technical Implementation session. You'll learn how to use Google Analytics and also get some indispensable techniques for analyzing and optimizing your marketing and traffic. Take a look at the agenda to learn which one would be right for you.

User Conference in Chicago
On November 4th, Authorized Consultant Stratigent is holding their 2009 Google Analytics User Conference with many members of the Google Analytics Product and Engineering teams in attendance to meet you and hear about how you're using the product and what you'd like to see.

Join fellow Google Analytics users for a full day packed with tips from industry insiders, discussions on the latest innovations, customer panel conversations featuring organizations making the most out of Google Analytics. And,

Stratigent will discuss some of the applications that you can’t live without and, of course, networking with other members of the Google Analytics community will be a huge part of the day. Some of the highlights from the day's agenda include:

Improving ROI and Conversion with Google Analytics: Presented by Phil Mui, Ph.D., Senior Product Manager at Google.
Enterprise Insights: Understand what sets world-class analytics programs apart

Customer Discussion Panel: Listen to everyday Google Analytics users discuss their struggles and triumphs

Applications You Can't Live Without Competition: Discover these useful add-ons that make your life easier

Google Analytics - Guide to Success: Hear tricks of the trade from seasoned professionals

Register by 10/11/09, you’ll receive an extra 10% off. Click Here to Register Now. Also, Google Analytics has provided a limited number of Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ) exam vouchers, which allows individuals to demonstrate proficiency in Google Analytics (a $50 value).

Posted by Eva Woo, Google Analytics Team

Rapid Fire Web Analytics Q and A with Avinash and Nick

2009-10-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

Recently we started an initiative to ask you to share your most burning questions via Google Moderator (link: Google Analytics Google Moderator site).

This week, Avinash and I sat down to do a rapid fire Q&A to answer your questions. Rather than do a dry text Q&A version, we chose to do a video, and we think you'll find it educational and entertaining.

In this episode we discuss:

How is bounce rate calculated
Effect of search bots on data collection
Finding a benchmarking category for sites that don't fit into any particular benchmark category
What is the best way to identify landing pages with high bounce rate
How to find new keywords to improve content performance
Effects of private browsing and incognito mode on data collection

Here are links to resources we discussed in the video:

Compare landing page performance by bounce rate report screen shot
Google Insights for Search
Google Search Based Keyword Tool

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

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

Batter up! eMetrics DC, October 19-23

2009-10-08T14:27:00.000-07:00

Come to the nation's capital and join us again this year at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in Washington, D.C. from October 19-23.

Ah, The Fall Classic. If you're stateside*, you may be aware that the baseball playoffs are in full swing. Full swing.

Bear with us here. Are you familiar with the expression, "Right in your wheelhouse"? In baseball, a wheelhouse is a hitter's powerzone. It's the part of a batter's swinging range in which they will make the best contact with the ball. It's the sweetspot. If a pitch is right in your wheelhouse it's basically that pitch that makes your eyes widen in anticipation. The ball is coming right where you want it, in the spot where you'll have the best chance of hitting it out of the park. Grip it and rip it.

Some hitters like a pitch inside and low, some like it level center right over the plate. Each hitter has a wheelhouse, and a pitcher should figure out where that is and keep the ball away from it. Our buddy Justin Cutroni, lifelong Red Sox fan and web analytics practitioner extraordinaire, knows a thing or two about this.

The term "wheelhouse" itself actually comes from even further back than baseball. A wheelhouse on a ship is where the captain commands the ship, also known as the bridge.

But, the phrase can also be used generally to refer to something that is in your area of expertise. For instance, "Analyzing website traffic is right in Justin Cutroni's wheelhouse." This is our usage.

Here's another one: "The eMetrics conference is right in Google Analytics' wheelhouse." You probably saw that coming, but it's true. We love this conference because it brings together a bunch of analysts, marketers, vendors, thoughtleaders and general wild cards who are agitating over the methods and tools that help them focus their organizations towards the best data-driven practices. Wire to wire, it's a good week of learning, arguing, networking and information sharing. We'll be there, and hope you will too!

Here's a discount code for 20% off a 1 and/or 3-day pass when you register for eMetrics:
SPONSORDC09

In addition to our booth, here's some Google Analytics and Website Optimizer related things going on at the conference, including some breakout sessions we'll be hosting in conference room Beech. (We'll also have details about the following at our booth.)

Monday, October 19:
9am - 4:30pm Google Analytics Workshop in conference room Chestnut
This will be excellent and enriching. You'll be exposed to Google Analytics from soup to nuts in a small, hands on, high energy, classroom setting where you can get personal attention. You'll learn set up for your particular site, best practices, newest features and be exposed to other related products such as Google Website Optimizer. You need to register for this separately.
Instructor: Caleb Whitmore from Analytics Pros

Tuesday, Oct 20:
10:30-11am: Google Website Optimizer 101 in conference room Beech
Get acquainted with Google Website Optimizer and learn about a/b and multivariate testing on your site. "Conversion rate lift" will become part of your regular vocabulary.

2:30-3pm: Google Analytics main presentation in Plaza B&C
You'll hear some good stuff from our team, presented by the best speaker we know. We've been working hard to be ready for eMetrics and this should be a fun half hour. :)

3pm-3:30pm Deep dive! in conference room Beech
Google Analytics enterprise-level feature deep dive breakout session led by Phil Mui, senior Product Manager of Google Analytics. You'll love this. Phil has the style of the best professor/mentor/wizard you had at MIT. :-)

Wednesday, Oct 21
10:30-11am: Google Website Optimizer Techie Session in conference room Beech
Website Optimizer Engineers from the team will cover advanced topics and techniques to help you take it to the next level.

3:00 - 3:20: Meet the Google Analytics and Website Optimizer Partner Network in Conference Room Beech
Some of our authorized consultants will be attending the conference and will intro themselves and tell you what they can do for you, from simple support or training, to helping you get the right implementation, to basic or advanced analysis, either on a project basis or ongoing. In addition to analytics and website testing, they do SEM, SEO, e-commerce, design, branding and more. Feel free to ask them questions to get details about engaging one of them. There are over 100 worldwide, so chances are there's one near you.

The conference is less than two weeks away. We hope you register and we see you there!

*If you're not stateside, think Cricket. Don't worry, we'll be talking World Cup next year.
Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Appraising Your Investment in Enterprise Web Analytics

2009-10-05T11:54:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, we asked Forrester Research to help us understand the key trends in enterprise web analytics. The commissioned study conducted by Forrester, "Appraising Your Investment in Enterprise Web Analytics" provides rich insights into what large companies want from an enterprise solution and how they are thinking about their web analytics decisions.

First, let's provide some context for what was considered an "enterprise." The study looked at companies with at least $500 million in annual revenue. Of the 198 companies that met this criteria, almost half (45%) have annual revenues in excess of $5 billion. Three quarters of the companies have over 5,000 employees.

One of the study's findings that we find interesting is around the role of people and web analytics technology. As companies re-evaluate their investments in web analytics, the study explains that:

"Enterprise companies must ask themselves if they are paying too much for capabilities that they simply do not need. In some cases, gaining fewer seldom-used capabilities is a worthwhile tradeoff if funds can be reallocated to hire more resources necessary for analysis."

Companies are recognizing that analysts drive insights, not the analytics tool itself. According to the study, "sixty percent of decision-makers agree that investments in web analytics people are more valuable than investments in web analytics technology." This is in-line with Avinash Kaushik's 10/90 rule for web analytics success: invest 10% of your analytics budget on the actual technology and 90% of your budget in the people who deliver actionable insight, whether in-house analysts, agencies, or vendor partners. It's the people that matter.

Below are other key findings from the Forrester report's Executive Summary:

• Free web analytics takes residence within the enterprise. A staggering 53% of enterprises surveyed currently use a free technology solution as their primary web analytics tool, and 71% use free tools in some capacity. This places use of fee-based solutions in the minority, with only 33% of survey respondents paying for web analytics technologies (12% use homegrown solutions, and 2% use some other option). In addition, it dispels the belief that free solutions are only being used in small organizations or somehow diminished in their capacity to provide value to the enterprise.

• The merits of free analytics products are compelling. Among respondents currently paying for their primary web analytics tools, 66% would consider displacing them with a free alternative. While the primary driver for this consideration is cost, 60% of enterprises are more likely to consider a free tool now because of recent improvements in free solutions. Additionally, 52% are enticed by free tools because they allow enterprises to invest more in the people necessary to drive insight rather than the technology used to collect and analyze data.

• Balancing costs and benefits requires introspection. We found that 52% of practitioners employing both free and fee-based solutions fail to effectively use more than half of the capabilities offered by their tools. This realization is cause for a needs assessment to determine if fee-based web analytics technologies are justified or simply excessive. For many, spending on web analytics technologies could be better allocated toward program development and acquisition of expertise.

• Reliability and ease of use are characteristics that enterprises crave. For 71% of enterprises surveyed, web analytics data plays a significant role in driving decisions. So it comes as no surprise that users place a premium on data assurance, with 45% citing reliable data collection as the most important vendor selection criteria. This was followed by 40% who listed an easy-to-use interface and product pricing as the second equally most important vendor selection consideration.

• Organizations are approaching a point of inflection. Nearly two-thirds of enterprises would abandon their current web analytics provider given the right circumstances. While 74% of large enterprises agreed that web analytics is a technology that they cannot do without, many indicated that alternative tools would suffice. These metrics indicate that organizations are receptive to change and justifiably seek solutions best suited to meet their needs.

If you'd like to learn more, download the full report. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Post a comment and tell us what you think!

Posted by Dai Pham, Google Analytics Team

Analytics training coming to NYC, Chicago, Berkeley, Seattle, Phoenix, and Charlotte!

2009-10-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

Do you learn best by clear examples? Do you get the feeling you could be doing so much more with Google Analytics, but are not quite sure how? Do you want to take your skills to the next level? Or are you starting from scratch? Whatever your goal or skill level, there's a day-long Google Analytics Seminars For Success that is right for you - and is coming to a US city near you.

Our instructors have years of experience implementing some of the most sophisticated Google Analytics implementations to date and working with customers of every skill level. They are touring the country with S4s (Seminars For Success) spreading that knowledge to the public. They are all Google Analytics Authorized Consultants and are listed in parentheses below next to the city name.

Former students tell us all the time they never realized how much there was to learn and how they wished they had taken the class sooner.

We’re happy to announce a new round of cities hosting the seminars through the end of the year—sign up today!

New York, NY (EpikOne)
Oct 8: Analytics Intro/Marketer Training
Oct 9: Analytics Advanced & Implementation Training

Chicago, IL (WebShare)
Oct 28: Analytics Intro/Marketer Training
Oct 29: Analytics Advanced & Implementation Training
Oct 30: Website Optimizer & Landing Page Testing

Berkeley, CA (WebShare)
Nov 4: Analytics Intro/Marketer Training
Nov 5: Analytics Advanced & Implementation Training
Nov 6: Website Optimizer & Landing Page Testing

Seattle, WA (WebShare)
Nov 18: Analytics Intro/Marketer Training
Nov 19: Analytics Advanced & Implementation Training
Nov 20: Website Optimizer & Landing Page Testing

Phoenix, AZ (WebShare)
Dec 9: Analytics Intro/Marketer Training
Dec 10: Analytics Advanced & Implementation Training
Dec 11: Website Optimizer & Landing Page Testing

Charlotte, NC (ROI Revolution)
Dec 9: Analytics Intro/Marketer Training
Dec 10: Analytics Advanced & Implementation Training

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team and Corey Koberg, WebShare, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

Overview Of The Google Analytics Platform And API

2009-09-30T21:20:00.000-07:00

In the previous two videos from the API team, tech lead Jacob Matthews discussed What Is the Google Analytics API and Steps To Using the Google Analytics API.

In our third video, we turn to Ruth Doane, another Tech Lead, to take a step back and look under the hood of Google Analytics itself. Did you ever wonder how data is collected and organized in Google Analytics? See what happens to traffic data after it is sent to Google Analytics and learn how it gets processed and stored, and then ends up in the Web Interface and Custom Reporting.

And best of all, learn how the API works with your data, and how it puts you are in the driver seat. Enjoy!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, The Google Analytics API Team

Advanced: Structure Your Account With Roll Up Reporting And More

2009-09-29T11:58:00.000-07:00

Guest post by the team at E-Nor, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant

For the analytics ninjas out there, you know that data accuracy is probably one of the most challenging aspects of analytics across all solutions and platforms, and you learn to apply best practices and establish processes to improve data collection and reporting.

But for the rest of us, how do we help marketers, business owners, and webmasters have confidence in their data? Analytics is all about clarity. It should help you see actionable statistics clearly and quickly. However, when you have a website structure with multiple domains and subdomains - which is often the case - sometimes things can get jumbled.

For instance, you are a CMO or a Director of Marketing at the enterprise and you are responsible for the performance and ROI of a large number of web proprieties. You look at your analytics reports and you can't find your ecommerce data from site A, site B is referring traffic to itself (definitely not a good thing!), and conversion data from your marketing campaign microsite is no where to be found.

This image sums up the feeling.

No need to panic. This post aims to offer an approach to help you plan your Google Analytics accounts setup in a structured fashion to help with clarity. I hope that by following the approach and the technical steps, you will be able to collect and manage all your data, make more sense of it, and most importantly, ensure what you are reporting on, trending, dashboarding and analyzing is based on accurate data.

There are two distinct sections of this post:

The Strategy (non-technical)
The How (technical)

The Strategy

There are many ways to structure your Google Analytics profiles when you have multiple domains and subdomains. But in this post I will limit myself to the one that I like the most and I believe is the least confusing.

Before I go into details of the solution, and for simplification, let us assume we are dealing with a project that has the following requirements:
A business with 3 domains (www.a.com, www.b.com, and www.c.com)

1 domain (a.com) links to a 3rd party shopping cart (www.mystore.com)

2 domains (a.com and b.com) have multiple sub-domains

Here is a graphical representation of the structure:

Measurement Requirements

Track each domain and sub-domain separately (e.g. www.a.com, news.a.com, and blog.b.com)

Track the rollup/overall traffic for all domains and sub-domains

Track full e-commerce transactions

Solution

Create a Google Analytics account for each domain (www.a.com, www.b.com, and www.c.com)

Customize the tracking code to link the multiple sub-domains with their main domains

Link the third party shopping cart with the main domain and install Google Analytics tracking code in all shopping pages

Create a rollup Google Analytics account and add its code to all domains and sub-domains

Graphical example of a well-planned Analytics Account Structure:

Now on to the technical stuff. If you don't enjoy javascript and regular expressions, you may stop here and ask your webmaster or technical analyst to read further :-)

The How:

I will try to illustrate the technical implementation in 10 simple steps:

1- Create a unique Google Analytics account for each domain www.a.com, www.b.com, and www.c.com and then use the account number UA-AAAAAAAA-1 in the code in step 3 and use the accounts UA-BBBBBBBB-1 for www.b.com and UA-CCCCCCCC-1 for www.c.com in the code in step 8.

2- Create a Google Analytics account for the a rollup account that will oversee all domains and sub-domains (use the GA account number UA-XXXXXXXX-1 in the code used in step 3 and 8)

3- Add the following Google Analytics tracking code to the main site (www.a.com) and its sub-domains (blog.a.com, news.a.com, images.a.com, and media.a.com)

About the following code: We have a regular pageTracker object to track activity on each particular subdomain and a rollupTracker to track activity across all subdomains and the third party checkout site. (Click here to learn more about the customizations we made to the standard Google Analytics tracking code)

4- Enable E-Commerce Reporting

Analytics Settings > Profile Settings > Edit Profile Information

5- Add the following code* to all shopping cart pages on the store site (www.mystore.com)

*Make sure to add this code to the top of the pages.

6- Add the e-commerce tracking code to the confirmation page after the GATC.

Read more about "How to track e-commerce transactions?"

7- Change the links to the store site (www.mystore.com) on the main site (www.a.com) to use _link as following:

If the current link looks like:

Change it to:

8- Repeat step number 3 for domains www.b.com and www.c.com after updating the Google Analytics account number UA-AAAAAAAA-1 and the setDomainName value.

To view the entire code for www.b.com and its sub-domains (click here)

To view the entire code for www.c.com (click here)

9- Create a profile for each sub-domain (only if needed)

In order to track a sub-domain (ex. blog.b.com) in its own profile, follow the following three steps:

a- Create a filter that include only traffic from Hostname=blog.b.com

b- Create a profile and name it "Blog"

c- Apply the sub-domain filter to the new profile

10- As you might have noticed from the codes that we added so far to all pages, we added an extra Google Analytics account to track all pageviews across domains and sub-domains to one Google Analytics account. We call this account “rollup account”.

var rollupTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXXXXX-1");
rollupTracker._trackPageview();

Since in the rollup account, we will track pages from different sites and many of these pages might share the same naming convention, I suggest that you create an advanced filter that adds the hostname to the page name to differentiate between pages with same URI.

Once you apply the filter, the upcoming data will appear as following:

Note, in the example above if we didn’t apply the “Add Hostnames” filter, all home.aspx pages will appear as one page with 2685 pageviews.

If you have been with us so far, you are now ready to conduct your analysis based on clean and much more accurate data :)

To review each domain by itself and for deep-dive analysis, use the domain profiles

To get an overview and to see how the business is doing across all sites, use the “Rollup Account”

Google Analytics - Accounts and Profiles

Account Rollup in Google Analytics

Google Analytics for the Enterprise

Posted by Allaedin Ezzeidin, Analytics Specialist @ E-Nor, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant