Google Analytics Blog

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 which will become available to all accounts in the coming weeks (download snippet instructions). We will be supporting 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

Back to Basics: What's in a profile setting?

2009-09-28T16:33:00.000-07:00

A little known link in your Analytics account is the key to unlocking extra ecommerce functionality in your Google Analytics account. In this post, we'll show you how clicking the 'Edit' link in your Main Website Profile Information box can open doors for your AdWords and ecommerce tracking purposes.

Once you click 'Edit' (highlighted in red above), you'll see a screen with editable fields like the image pictured below. The numbered list corresponds to the number next to each field so that you can learn how to set up a profile and enable the right features for your tracking purposes.

Enter an easily identifiable profile name.
Fill in the web property URL that you are tracking for this profile.
Enter the default page to which your server defaults to when no page on the domain is specified. This information allows Google Analytics to combine requests to www.yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com/index.html, which are in fact the same page. If Default page isn't specified, these would be reported as two separate pages.
If your account is linked to an AdWords account, your time zone country and time zone will default to the ones specified in your AdWords account. If your accounts are not linked, you'll see pull-down menus that display options for you to select for #4 and #5.
Same as #4.
If your site uses unique session IDs or other query parameters in your URLs that you are not interested in seeing in your reports, you can easily exclude these parameters by entering them into this field.
Enter the currency you want to see in your reports.
If you have linked an AdWords account, import your cost data so that you can get AdWords information pumped into your Google Analytics account. Once your cost data is imported, the information will appear in the Clicks tab of your AdWords report. Learn how to import your cost data.
If you're tracking e-commerce on your website, you must enable it to be reflected in your reports in this section. If you would like to set up e-commerce for your site, please read this Help Center article.
If you have a search engine on your site, you may want to enable this feature. Site Search contains reports about the visitors using the 'search' functionality on your website. Google Analytics Site Search reports deliver many useful pieces of information - for example, they can help you analyze how people use the search functionality on your site, and report its conversion metrics. Learn how to enable Site Search.

Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

Fall In Love With Motion Charts

2009-09-24T14:33:00.000-07:00

Have you used Motion Charts yet? If not, it's a little like playing an instrument. It takes a little practice, but once you get the hang of it, it's the best thing you ever did - fun and informative and you'll want to do it daily. Create them and watch them reveal patterns you weren't aware of in your keyword activity or some other area that is important to your site.

We've written a few posts on Motion Charts and made a video, and now we wanted to refer you to a great article called How To Use Google Analytics Motion Charts To Maximize Results, on Searchengineland.com, written by one of our Authorized Consultants, Daniel Waisberg from easynet search marketing in Israel.

Daniel discusses both how to use Motion Charts and also what metrics to designate as which elements of the chart to best use the feature for optimizing your online marketing. In his example, Daniel chooses to have conversion values as the size and color of the bubbles so you can easily spot them for optimization opportunities. For instance, for an e-commerce site and a motion chart showing keywords with the y-axis as visits and the x-axis as bounce rate, Daniel says:

Ecommerce conversion rate (color of bubble) shows the conversion rate for a keyword. This is important since you might have high converting keywords that are not receiving enough traffic. Look for red-small bubbles located close to the x-axis—these keywords should get priority optimization treatment. Tip: focus on these and related keywords on your PPC campaigns.

Revenue (size of bubble) shows the amount of money this keyword is driving to your website. Look for big-blue bubbles—this is a signal that a keyword brings lots of money but could bring even more if it converted better. Tip: optimize the pages related to these keywords to improve conversion.

Daniel also goes into detail about how to share motion charts with others. If you're ready to try Motion Charts today, his article is your next step. Then, for more inspiration, here are a few more examples of using them.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

New Video: Steps to Using the Analytics API

2009-09-23T11:58:00.000-07:00

Last week, in our Google Analytics API video series, Jacob Matthews discussed What is the Google Analytics API? In this new video, Jacobs goes deeper and describes the three steps developers need to take to retrieve data from Google Analytics: Authentication, Account Query, and Profile/Report Query.

Feeling inspired? Play with our interactive javascript examples to see the API in action.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

Back To Basics: Save Clicks, Save Time

2009-09-21T15:24:00.000-07:00

Did you know that you can save clicks and jump directly to a deep-level report from your dashboard? Let's say that you want to see which cities in California you get traffic from. Ordinarily, you'd need to click Visitors, then Map Overlay in the report navigation. Then, you'd need to click United States, then California. But, you can save 3 of these 4 clicks by simply adding this report to your dashboard.

Try it now. Go to one of your favorite reports that requires several clicks to access. Once you've arrived at the report you want --and at the level you want it -- click Add to Dashboard. (The Add to Dashboard button is at the top of your report on the left, next to the Export and Email buttons.)

You'll now see the report on your dashboard. The next time you log in to your Analytics account, you'll be able to see the top cities from California on your dashboard and jump right to the report with a single click.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

New Analytics API Features including Event Tracking!

2009-09-18T14:14:00.000-07:00

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

Event Tracking

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

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

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

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

Navigational data

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

Increased filter length

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

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

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

New Video: What is the Analytics API?

2009-09-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

I spent a day in Irvine, California interviewing some of the software engineers who built the Google Analytics API, starting with Jacob Matthews, the tech lead behind the API. If you haven't read any of our API documentation yet but you have been wondering what the Google Analytics API is all about, we put together a couple of videos where we hear about the API from the people who built it. Here is the first one where we keep it high level and ask Jacob, "What is the Google Analytics API?"

Enjoy!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, The Google Analytics API Team

Using Google Analytics To Identify High-Performing Keywords

2009-09-11T14:48:00.001-07:00

The topic of using Google Analytics to optimize your PPC keyword buys never gets old. We have posted about it here a bunch. It's putting your PPC money where your analytics mouth is, uh, for lack of a better metaphor and is one of the core reasons to use web analytics. Recently, a Google blog called Solutions for Southeast Asia wrote a post about this topic, covering the techniques to use Google Analytics and AdWords to find and add the most effective unused keywords. It's a great post - definitive and very thorough, going from soup to nuts, expanding on these steps:

Step 1: Ensure Goals and E-commerce Tracking are set up

Step 2: Access the Keywords Report
Step 3: Export non-paid keywords to a spreadsheet
Step 4: Expand the list of keywords using other Google products
Step 5: Download a list of keywords that you are already advertising on
Step 6: Identify keywords you are not advertising on
Step 7: Expand on these keywords and start advertising

For explicit directions on each of these steps, take a read of the article. You and your website will benefit. Of special note - step 4, which we've pasted in below. As you can see, Vinoaj, the author, gives you an extensive list of Google products that can help you refine or expand your keyword list. Some of them you've probably never even heard about, but will simply take your targeting to the new levels, especially when budgets are tight but you want to grow your business as Q4 approaches.

To consider more keyword options, consider using some of Google's other free products to discover more opportunities: Google Insights for Search, Google Trends, Site Search reportsin Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, and even the new Wonder Wheel. If you are an AdWords user take a look at the Keyword Tool, Search-based Keyword Tool, Search Query Performance reports, and more. Once you have identified additional keywords you would like to advertise on, add it to your list of keywords from Step 3.

Happy analyzing!

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Episode 3 Of Bottlenecks To Implementation: Should You Use An Agency?

2009-09-04T08:09:00.001-07:00

Here is the final episode of our three part series on bottlenecks that companies face implementing web analytics. In this episode, we ask the question, "Should you use an agency, or can you do everything (implementation and analysis) in house?"

Bottom line: you need big brains.

And if you decide to go with one of our authorized consultants, you can find one near you. They are analytics do-everything agencies which often double as SEMs, SEOs, and Website Optimizers so you get the full circle of support for almost everything you do online - including strategic recommendations on improving your web presence and marketing.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Episode 2: Bottlenecks To Implementation For SMBs

2009-09-01T13:46:00.000-07:00

The first episode in the three part "Data Driven Discussion" series about bottlenecks to implementation focused on large, enterprise-class companies. In this episode, we ask our experts Nick and Avinash the question, "What obstacles does a small-to-medium sized business face in implementing analytics?"

SMBs are often more nimble than large businesses but resource-constrained with everyone working overtime. A lot is at stake. In this environment, analytics can have a huge impact, answering questions and giving guidance through data to back up major decisions.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

The Value Of Landing Pages

2009-08-31T12:09:00.000-07:00

Imagine that we're launching a brand new advertising campaign for our new e-commerce website that sells Empanadas, my favorite food. The structure of the website is simple. We have a homepage, a few category pages that lists empanadas by type (baked, fried, etc), and hundreds of individual pages for each type of empanada (ham and cheese, steak, chicken, veggie, etc.).

Website structure

(click to enlarge)

Given this site design and our goal to sell as many empanadas as possible, let's look at this question:

Which type of landing page (home, category, or product) leads people to purchase more empanadas?

To answer it, we'll use two Google Analytics features, Custom Reports and Advanced Segments, to find out exactly, in dollars, which is the best type of page. And to perform this analysis we need one of two things: 1. e-commerce or 2. goals with a goal value.

Searching for the answer in Landing Pages

First go to the Content > Landing Pages.

(click to enlarge)

This report is naturally a good place to start but it only gives us three metrics: Entrances, Bounces and Bounce Rate. I want to know dollar amount, not bounce rate. To get the value of each landing page we have to create a custom report.

Step 1) Create the Custom Report
Go to Custom Reporting and create the following report:

Dimension: Landing Page
Metrics: Entrances, Abandonment Rate, Goal Completed and Value per visitor

(click to enlarge)

Great. Now I know the average value for any visitor that starts on these pages. On average the value per landing pages is $0.07. This means for all people who arrive at my webpage, on average each person will buy $0.07 worth of empanadas. Not much huh? However, as you can see some pages have a consistently much better conversion rate than others. For example, my home page -- /home.html -- gives me a per visit value of $0.10. I'd like to compare that with my other two page types: product and categories. We could go through this list and pick out one by one which is better, or write a regular expression in the search filter box, but an easier and more flexible way to identify these page is via Advanced Segments.

Step 2) Create the Advanced Segment
Take a minute to think about the layout of your website. Is there a unique identifier that let's you segment your landing page types? If there isn't then ask your Webmaster what you can do to get around this problem. In our example, remember that our website is very simple. Every empanada page contains the word empanada.html, every category page contains category.html, and the home page is home.html. To begin with, let's create a category segment.

Create the "Category" Advanced Segment
1. Go to Advanced Segments>Create New.
2. Dimension: Landing Page
3. Contains "category.html"
4. Name it "Visits that land on Category."
5. Save and Apply to report

Ouch! Visitors that land on my category pages spend an average of $0.04. Much worse than the average of $0.07. Now let's compare with what happens when a user lands on a page of an individual empanada product page. It's the same process as above except we use Landing Page Contains "empanada.html."

Create the "Empanada" Advanced Segment
1. Go to Advanced Segments>Create New.
2. Dimension: Landing Page
3. Contains "empanada.html"
4. Name it "Visits that land on empanada."

5. Save and Apply to report

Here is what we get:

(click to enlarge)

Wow! Visits that see a product page before anything else spend $0.30 on average. That's over 7 times more than the value of the category landing pages. Which pages should we use? Our empanada pages of course! We no longer have to guess which page is best. Even if we have hundreds of different types of empanadas we can calculate to the penny the potential value of focusing our advertisements on products.

Yeah, that's nice but how do I do the same for my website?

The above is a great example of full circle analytics. Set up goals, then create the reports and segments you best need to analyze the success of the goals. We chose to look at Landing Pages, but after you have goals, reports and segments in place, you can do most analyses.

Here are the key takeaways:

1. Most importantly your URLs must have a unique identifier (like our ?type=empanadas) so you can segment by page type AND either e-commerce implementation or a goal value.

2. Instead of thinking home, category, and product think home, broad, or specific. Usually, the more specific and focused the landing pages the better.

3. If you don't use an e-commerce website don't worry, you can do the same analysis. For e-commerce websites its much easier for us to calculate exact dollar return -- but! we can also use goal value to calculate user value. So, if you don't sell a product, your goal might be to have the users fill out a contact form. If for every 100 users that fill the form you can gain 5 leads that over a month spend an average of $100 each then the value of your form is 5x$100=$500/100=$5 per form completed. This goal value can also be used to calculate landing page value.

Now that you know exactly how to use Google Analytics to identify the value of your landing pages it's time to apply the lessons to your website. How much money do your landing pages bring you?

Posted by Gabriel Francis, Google Analytics Team

An API Integration To Measure Significant Change

2009-08-28T13:29:00.000-07:00

Sophisticated, useful and cool applications are being developed everyday through the open Google Analytics API. We're loving what we're seeing. Basically, developers are grabbing their data from Google Analytics and slicing and dicing it, mixing it and mashing it with other data and applications, creating dashboards and widgets, and innovating some of the coolest stuff a data driven person could hope for. For example, we're really impressed with an app called Trendly which makes it easier to find important movers and shakers among your data via an innovative new interface, cutting down on the time you need to monitor your profiles. The team who built Trendly is using it as their one stop Google Analytics dashboard. We asked the team to share how this application came about, and here's what they wrote:

How many of you can afford to pay someone to monitor your analytics full time? We can't. We're a small startup, and we just don't have the resources to make that happen.

We use Google Analytics to track visits to our website, www.dabbledb.com. We'd love to have someone watching the hundreds of keywords, referrers, and campaigns that drive traffic to our site, someone who would send us a quick email whenever something really interesting happened: "Hey guys, thought you'd like to know that your average visitors from 'online database' doubled last week, and it's staying there - guess that SEO is working!"

So, using the Google Analytics API, we created Trendly, a monitoring and visualization tool which you can look at anytime and easily see what's changed. In short, Trendly uses mathematical models to take noisy data like this:
and figure out when significant changes have happened, marking it like this:

According to Trendly, our average daily visitors from the search words "online database" went up from 18 to 32 in mid-January, and then up again to 50 in early February. Also, Trendly sends us periodic emails to let us know about changes like these, saving us a lot of time. It also prepares a news feed with attractive charts that put the changes into perspective relative to everything else that's going on. Take a look at this - it calls out significant changes and makes them easy to notice with a timeline on the right.

When we first built Trendly for our internal use, we cobbled it together by screen-scraping and downloading exports from Google Analytics. But part of what made this tool exciting to us is that it solves a pretty universal problem. Trendly is your analyst until you can afford to hire a full time analyst. Heck, it probably keeps a clearer log of important changes than an analyst would! And with Trendly, you can delay this much longer since it cuts down your worflow by hours per week.

The new GA Data API allowed us to share it! With no signup and a couple of clicks, anyone can authenticate with Google and authorize us to grab their data and generate the reports. Suddenly our internal tool became a new product offering which can help any Google Analytics user. Give it a try and see for yourself.

What the guys at DabbleDB built is amazing. 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.

Nick Mihailovski, The Google Analytics API Team