Yogi Land

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.).




Posted by Gabriel Francis, Google Analytics Team

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

You've been anointed to make it through difficult times. When God breathed His life into you, He breathed perseverance, determination, strength, courage and endurance. That means you have staying power; you can outlast every attack. God did not create us to give up when it gets hard. He didn't create us to get discouraged when we face obstacles. He made us more than conquerors. We have victory in our DNA. If you're going to fulfill your destiny and become all that God has created you to be, you have to have a made-up mind that no matter what comes against you, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many times you get knocked down, you are not going to stay down. Life may throw you some curves. There may have been some bumps, but every setback is a setup for a greater comeback. Scripture says, "Because you got a double dose of trouble and more than your share of contempt, your inheritance in the land will be double and your joy will go over." Difficulties in life were never meant to destroy you; they were meant to strengthen you, promote you, and make you better off than you were. If you will dig your heels in and have a never-say-die attitude, then no matter what comes against you, no matter how long it takes or how difficult it is, when it's all said and done, you will become everything God has created you to be. You'll receive everything He has intended for you to have, and God will turn every battlefield into a blessing field.

We've found a helpful workaround that lets you export any number of rows in one go. We've listed the steps below so that you can bookmark this page whenever you need to export all the data listed in your reports.

Instructions

In our example Keyword report, you can see that there are over 3,000 keywords to export. This would mean that we'd have to hit 'Export' over six times!

To avoid the manual labor of exporting and then consolidating all your CSV reports into one, follow the steps below:

1. Go the report that contains the data you want to export.

2. Append "&limit=5000" (or however rows you need) to the URL displayed in your browser URL window, and hit enter to reload the report.

For example:

Before: https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/keywords....2311
After : https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/keywords?.................2311&limit=5000

3. After you've clicked 'Enter,' visually confirm that the URL displayed in your browser has the "limit" parameter appended to it. While there won't be any visible difference in the user interface, exporting will now yield more rows.

4. Select the Export tab, and click 'CSV' (not the option that says 'CSV for Excel').

5. The exported data should contain all the rows from your Analytics table.

We hope this added some precious time back to your Monday!

Posted by Christina Park, The Google Analytics Team

When it comes to social networks, Twitter is definitely king. With millions of users, and new ones coming on board daily, this micro-blogging service is a very powerful communication tool. In the space of 140 characters, you can type short messages and instantly send them to your “followers”. But what if you don’t have Internet access and you still want to send those tweets? No problem. If you have a phone, you can speak your messages, and within a short amount of time see them posted on Twitter. Let’s review some of the services that can be used to make this possible. 1) http://www.TwitWoop.com Your voice message can be up to 140 seconds long. Your followers can even use reply codes and respond in kind to your messages. You can register up to two phones per Twitter account. After registering, you’ll need to call a New York or California phone number to record your outgoing tweets. If you live out of state, you will be charged long distance call rates. 2) http://www.CallTweet.com Local access numbers are provided which you can call. All you need to do is enter in your username and password, and start talking. Your followers will receive a tweet that contains a link back to your audio message. Simple. 3) http://www.TweetCall.com It doesn’t get any easier than this. Once registered, call 877-TWEETCALL and speak your “tweet”. Within minutes, it’s passed on to your Twitter account. Your user name and password for this site are the same as your Twitter account. 4) http://www.TwitterFone.com No Internet access? This free service makes it possible to speak your message into any phone, and within 5 to 10 minutes have it posted on Twitter. You’ll need to ask for an “invitation” to be able to register for TwitterFone. Local numbers are provided. “Twitter Streams” can also be replied to, or direct messages can also be sent. So, the next time you want to tell the world what you’re up to, forget the computer and “speak your tweets”. Now that you know how easy it is to do, you might find that this is your favorite way of updating your followers, and “Tweet Speak” might just become your second language. I sure wish they would have taught this in High School.

by Merle’s Mission Blog

If you're ready to try your hand and using the Data Export API, we've created some new guides to help you get started quickly and easily.

First, for the JavaScript library, here's our new super-simple getting started guide. It leads you through creating a sample application step-by-step. With this guide, you can have a working HTML page that pulls in your Analytics data in minutes (really)! Once you're done, you'll be familiar with all the key elements you need to create a basic application. The guide also shows you where to go next, since you'll be poised to customize your app.

In addition, we also have a new Authentication Guide. Authentication is one of the more difficult aspects of getting started with Google Data, and for the JavaScript and Java guides, much of the authorization complexity is handled by library methods. For that reason, we've pulled the auth stuff out of all the language guides and put it in one central doc, with relevant samples beneath each authentication methodology. We hope this makes it easier for you to:

A. Get started quickly without being confused by authentication.
B. Have a source of authentication details when you are ready.
C. Understand which authentication method to use and when.

We'd love to hear your feedback on these guides through our Developer Group. Stay tuned for a similar guide for the Java client library.

Posted by Patricia Boswell, Google Analytics Team

It’s been a while since we’ve updated you on the phenomenal growth of our Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (GAAC) network. Over the last year, we are delighted to have added the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Romania, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Poland, India and Russia to the countries serviced "in-house" (by local companies) via the GAAC network. Their local business experience and of course their ability to speak the language are hugely important to helping their customers successfully deploy Google's analytics-related products.

Working with Google's worldwide network of Authorized Consultants is one of the most cost-effective investments you can make as an online business. Our "AC" partners are carefully vetted by our partner team and meet rigorous qualification standards, whether you need assistance with Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, or Urchin Software. Each offers a range of services including most or all of the following:

• Technical implementation
• Configuration/customization
• Consultation/optimization
• Training & seminars
• Paid support with SLAs

Our global network now offers Authorized Consultants in these regions:

• North America: USA, Canada, Mexico
• South America: Argentina, Brazil
• Europe: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK
• Middle East & Africa: Israel, South Africa
• Asia Pacific: Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Sri Lanka

Contact one of our partners at http://www.google.com/analytics/authorized_consultants.html

We don't have to go through life guessing what we should do. We have the Spirit of the Most High God living on the inside of us. We have a Counselor, a Helper, an Advisor, a Researcher, and a Guide. Jesus said, "He that has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying." God speaks to us in a still small voice. It's a knowing, a prompting, a suggestion. It may not make sense in our minds, our emotions may be telling us otherwise, but deep down in our heart, we know it's the right thing what we're hearing. God is constantly transmitting. The question is do we have our receivers tuned? When we take the time to be quiet and listen to what God is trying to show us, we gain inside information. God can protect us from danger and even warn us of the next move of our enemy. He can give us discernment to know right from the wrong, and the phony from the genuine relationships. If you will listen and take the time to be tuned into His inner promptings, letting peace be the umpire, you will continually stay on God's best path for your life and reap the fruit of living His best.

The YouTube blog post is fascinating reading, showing screenshots of the different variables on the homepage that were tested. And for those of you working on high traffic, enterprise-level sites, you know that making small, proven improvements - thereby moving the needle by small percentages - can mean huge wins for your bottom line. It's a must-read showing the practicality of multivariate testing.