Yogi Land» analytics

A Shout Out About Annotations

Yogi Liman — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:35:00 +0000

A few months ago at the Google I/O conference, we were approached by Zach Steindler, a co-founder at Olark (a way to gain customer insight and sale better through live chat) who was raving about Google Analytics Annotations. He had such a great business case, we decided to let him rave here. Enjoy, and thanks Zach.

Making good business decisions is hard, and making the right one is even harder. At Google I/O I realized many people use Google Analytics but they aren’t familiar with the recent annotations feature that has helped us make smarter business decisions.

When we look at our Google Analytics, we don’t really care if our numbers are up or down; what we really want to know is why. This means asking a lot of questions, particularly questions about what happened when, like:

“How long has that ad trial been running?”
“When did we release that update to the website?”
“What happened after that last blog post?”

To answer these questions I might have to dig through e-mails, commit logs, and probably end up pestering my teammates for an hour while we try to figure out what happened when. But this is serious stuff; if our numbers went up 50% in a week, you better believe we want to know why so we can do more of it!

Annotations are exactly the tool we needed to answer these questions without having to pester teammates and dig through the past. If you don't know, basically, they allow you to add notes of what events happened on a particular day. These notes are then visible for the different views in Google Analytics, so you can see how the events impacted your page views, goals, or whatever else you are tracking.

You can annotate whatever you want; we annotate things like external publicity, major updates to our site, blog posts, even service issues, to see how all these events are impacting our business.

We’re big believers in the power of open data; everyone on the team has access to Google Analytics and can contribute events they think are important. This has been incredibly useful for us. Now I can answer many why questions for myself, just by looking at the data other people have contributed. When I do need to interrupt the team, it’s because I have big-picture questions, not because I need them to help me track down dates. Also, you start to notice a rhythm of events, and if that rhythm changes, how it impacts your business. As a bonus, now we have this cool timeline of events the team thought was important, which is useful for retrospectives and end-of-period reports.

We’re far from being able to make perfect decisions with perfect knowledge, but annotations have made it much easier to answer the why questions so we can make good business decisions.

Posted by Patricia Boswell, Google Analytics Team

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Facebook Leads in the Top 1,000 Sites [STATS]

Yogi Liman — Fri, 28 May 2010 00:46:45 +0000

According to Google’s AdPlanner stats, Facebook is the #1 most-visited destination on the web. Weighing in at an unfathomably heavy 570 billion page views and 540 million users, the ubiquitous social network outranks every other non-Google site, taking more than 35% of all web traffic measured.

The stats, which do not include data from Google.com and YouTube, detail the categories, users and page views for each of the top 1,000 sites on the Internet. They also tell which sites have advertising. Wikipedia and Mozilla.com are the only two sites in the top 10 that remain ad-free.

Destinations such as Mozilla.com, Yahoo.com, MSN.com and Live.com sit high in the rankings due in large part to their status as default landing pages for various browsers.

When it comes to non-Facebook social media properties, Twitter ranks 18th with 5.4 billion page views, Flickr is 31st with 1.8 billion views and LinkedIn sits in 56th place at 1.7 billion views.

And the usual blogging sites make appearances, too. Blogspot is in 7th place, WordPress in 12th and Blogger in 53rd.

Other popular destinations, according to Google’s report, are international web portals such as Baidu, Sina, 163.com and Sohu. Though relatively unheard of in American tech press, these sites are the online equivalent of our solar system’s Jupiter: enormous and a bit out of our reach.

Bank of America and PayPal also made the list, coming in at 93rd and 39th, respectively. And in the news category we find the BBC, which was ranked 43rd with 2.5 billion hits, followed by the New York Times’ website, ranked 83rd with 600 million views.

We think it’s pretty spectacular and surprising that Facebook has come to dominate global web traffic in just a few short years. Are any of these stats eyebrow-raising to you?

For more technology coverage, follow Mashable Tech on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Google, Internet, LinkedIn, Twitter, Wikipedia, WordPress, YouTube, blogger

Tags: analytics, doubleclick, Google, stats, traffic

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New Name and New Badges for Authorized Consultants

Yogi Liman — Tue, 04 May 2010 02:20:00 +0000

Your friendly neighborhood Google Analytics Authorized Consultant program is getting a new costume and superhero name, though their powers will remain the same. (Read: we are renaming the program and with that comes a shiny new logo – we think of our partners as superpowered).

Our partners are now called Google Analytics Certified Partners. Here's the new logo:

If you are looking for help with your Google Analytics account, look for companies that display this Google Analytics Certified Partners logo. Companies displaying this logo have met our rigorous requirements demonstrating a level of expertise, agreed to our terms and conditions, and have proven experience to work with you.

Yes, we’ve made them jump through hoops because it’s important that we vet the best to service you. We don’t take it lightly because optimizing your Google Analytics account is serious business. So, whether it’s a quick consultation, help with an implementation or tracking a campaign, or long term support or training – look for companies that display the new logo. The new logos include a "Click to Verify" element that takes you to a listing on our partner page for more information.

You can find the latest list of Google Analytics Certified Partners here. The new logo is part of our plan to produce consistent naming and badging for all Google product partner programs.

Posted by Eva Woo, Google Analytics Team

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New In AdWords: Search Funnels

Yogi Liman — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:53:00 +0000

Yesterday, AdWords announced the launch of Search Funnels, a new set of reports available only in AdWords that describe the Google search ad click and impression behavior leading up to a conversion. They are rolling out over the next few weeks and work if you are using AdWords Conversion Tracking or importing your Google Analytics goals into AdWords.

What are Search Funnels?

Currently, conversions in AdWords are attributed to the last ad clicked before the conversion happened. However, it's likely that customers perform multiple searches prior to finally converting.

These reports provide data on how "upper-funnel" keywords behave on the conversion path prior to the last ad click. These funnels are not to be confused with funnels in Google Analytics, which are on-site funnels. These are the paths users take when seeing and clicking on your ads after doing a search on google.com, on the way to converting. They look back 30 days prior to the conversion.

In addition to a Top Conversions report, Search Funnels consists of 7 reports including Assisted Conversions, First and Last ClickAnalysis, Time Lag, and Path Length. Take a look at this video giving an overview of the new reports, and at the AdWords blog post to learn more.

How is this useful?
Search Funnels data gives you more data to help you gauge the true value of your keyword and ads in AdWords. By showing whether an ad was shown prior to a conversion and whether it was clicked or not, they help you analyze assist relationships. For instance, find out whether generic keywords actually contributed to conversions occurring from a branded keyword search, and vice versa. You're no longer limited to a last-click perspective in AdWords.

Take a look at the AdWords help center for a complete description of the new reports and metrics. These reports are currently in beta, and again, they'll be available in your AdWords account over the next few weeks. Bravo AdWords!

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

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Web Analytics TV #7 with Avinash and Nick

Yogi Liman — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:45:00 +0000

This is the 7th edition of Web Analytics TV with Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski! In this series you ask questions via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them!

Here is the list of last week’s questions.

In this action packed episode we discuss:

● Test your tracking implementation without waiting for the data to appear in reports.

● How GZip compression works for the tracking code.

● Retrieving the value for visitor level customer variables.

● Adding annotations via the API.

● Why do searches from Google Image Search appear as referrals in Google Analytics?

● Why do I see self-referrers to my site (my site referring to itself)?

● How to detect new search engines in Google Analytics?

● Fixing site overlay to not distinguish two links pointing to the same page.

● How to exclude internal users now that _setVar is deprecated.

● Why does (not set) appear as page titles in reports?

● What is the best way to begin with web analytics? How do you focus?

● Why do longer date ranges return different results?

● How can you use the Motion Chart bar graph?

● Best practises for setting up conversion goals for e-commerce sites.

Here are links to resources we discussed in the video:

● Validating and Troubleshooting your Google Analytics tracking code.

● Speed up your site, get better data, use asynchronous tracking.

● Use _getVisitorCustomVar() to retieve previously set visitor level custom variables.

● The open feature request to add annotations via our API; please vote and add use cases.

● Override the page referral using _setReferrerOverride().

● One possible solution to tracking Google Image Search.

● Use _addOrganic() to detect new search engines to in Google Analytics.

● Need help with Google Analytics? Have tough questions? Check out these 4 wonderful resources for help:

○ Hire a Google Analytics Authorized Consultants

○ Google Analytics Help Center

○ Google Analytics Code Site for developers

○ Google Analytics General Help Forum

● How sampling works in Google Analytics.

● Rock out with the Motion Charts Anthem (super cool!).

Special Notice: We also have a Custom Variables Webinar coming up on Wednesday, March 24th at 10:00 am PT. Space is limited, sign up before it’s too late!

If you found this post 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.

Thanks!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

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SES New York Is Next Week!

Yogi Liman — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:52:00 +0000

The Search Engine Strategies conference is next week in New York, and googlers from search, AdWords, AdSense, YouTube, Google Analytics and Website Optimizer will be there in force. We'll have a large booth where we'll be demoing the coolest new features from any and all of our products. Come by and say hello, and also be sure to attend some of the Google sessions.

Of special note, 4:45pm on Tuesday where Sissie Hsiao, a senior product manager on Google Analytics and AdWords, will be launching something really cool at the "Getting the Most Out of AdWords Features & Tools" session. We can't say any more, but we think you'll like it. I'll also be talking at the same time at the "Deep Dive Into Analytics: When Bounce Rate No Longer Floats Your Boat". Choose one of them and you can't miss.

Also – a must-see is the keynote on Day 2, given by our very own Avinash Kaushik. Here's the blurb about his keynote:

Be Awesome: Ideas for Approaching Search Analytics Differently
Click through rates, page rank, conversions, page views are all sweet. Yet they rarely scratch the surface of the true opportunity of search and subsequently quantifying the true impact of this massively data driven ecosystem. In his keynote Avinash will share specific ideas you can execute to find the audiences you crave online and use data to ensure that you are getting highest possible ROI. Keyword trees, yes. Attribution analysis, sure. Monetizing the long tail, got that. Micro conversions, yep. Bring an open mind.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

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More choice for users: browser-based opt-out for Google Analytics on the way

Yogi Liman — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:22:00 +0000

As an enterprise-class web analytics solution, Google Analytics not only provides site owners with information on their website traffic and marketing effectiveness, it also does so with high regard for protecting user data privacy. Over the past year, we have been exploring ways to offer users more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics. We concluded that the best approach would be to develop a global browser based plug-in to allow users to opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics. Our engineers are now hard at work finalizing and testing this opt-out functionality. We look forward to make it globally available to our users in the coming weeks.

Posted by Amy Chang, Group Product Manager, Google Analytics

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Integration With Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework

Yogi Liman — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:00:00 +0000

One of the core principles of Google Analytics has been to democratize the utility of the web analytics tool, and to open up the platform with an API. This enables developers to innovate new uses of Google Analytics to help analysts, marketers, and executives make better data-driven decisions. Since we launched Google Analytics, developers have extended the product to track Flash/Flex and recently Android and iPhone Devices.

To that end, we’d like to share that Google Analytics is now integrated into the Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework.

The framework is opensource and enables non-technical designers to quickly track how users interact with their Silverlight content. Using the Google Analytics component, designers can simply drag and drop icons to track the number of interactions on a design element. Then within Google Analytics, they can segment and compare the difference in behavior between users who interacted and those who didn’t.

Each of our various tracking solutions have various levels of feature support. Currently the Google Anlaytics integration with this framework supports event tracking, pageview tracking and custom variables. You can read more about the supported features in the Google Analytics specific documentation and find out more on the project homepage.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, The Google Analytics API Team

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Upcoming Webinar: Google Analytics Custom Variables

Yogi Liman — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:14:00 +0000

Custom variables are one of the most powerful features in Google Analytics. With them you can segment traffic by almost any attribute. For example, you could compare traffic from first-time customers versus repeat buyers. Or, if you run a content-oriented site, you could see which authors produce the most traffic..

While powerful, setting up custom variables can be a bit tricky, so we’re holding a webinar so you can learn how to make the most of them.

We'll start with Phil Mui, Senior Product Manager for Google Analytics, who'll share with you the features and capabilities of custom variables. Next, we'll hear from Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Developer Evangelist. Nick will show you how to implement custom variables on your website and share best practices.

We'll also be joined by Jim Snyder and Peter Howley from Empirical Path, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant. They'll share how they implemented custom variables for the Business Insider and the insights they've gained as a result. We'll close with a Q&A session with all the speakers.

We’ve set up a Google Moderator to take your questions in advance and so you can vote on the questions you’d most like to see answered. Ask your questions

Date: Wednesday, March 24th

Time: 10:00 AM Pacific

If you can't make the live webinar, we'll post a recording on the Google Analytics YouTube Channel a week or two afterwards.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

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Google Analytics API Case Study: Dolby Laboratories automates analytics reporting with Shufflepoint

Yogi Liman — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:41:00 +0000

We're really excited to see how companies can grow their businesses around the Google Analytics API. Today, we're publishing a case study that illustrates how Shufflepoint, Inc. has used the Google Analytics API to build an innovative product offering which has helped Dolby Laboratories become more productive.

ShufflePoint uses the the API to provide enterprise integration tools, and they've developed a SQL-like query language for Google Analytics. Dolby Laboratories uses GAQL and other ShufflePoint tools to simplify their web analytics workflow, one that incorporates spreadsheets with complex rollups, filters, and intermediate table calculations as well as annotated presentations.

The Challenge:

"Our [analysis] process gives us a lot of flexibility between analysis and presentation," explains Dolby's web analyst. "But, manually consolidating site data into the spreadsheets was time and labor intensive." To streamline the process, the team at Dolby turned to tools from ShufflePoint.

The Results:

"With GAQL and Excel Web Queries, we solved our immediate need for our reports to be updated dynamically" said Dolby. "Our team’s learning and decision making process has really sped up since engaging Shufflepoint. They improved our custom reports, which we used to do manually within Google Analytics, by combining it with the automation and flexibility of using Google Analytics’ Data API.”

A New Business Opportunity

"ShufflePoint has its roots in Excel and PowerPoint, and our capabilities here are a true differentiator in the marketplace," says Chris Harrington, CTO at ShufflePoint. "It's great to take something like the Google Analytics API and develop unique solutions that hit a home run for clients like Dolby. The Google Analytics Data API has opened up new possibilities for us — there are so many kinds of value-adds that you can create for companies out there. It's a new business opportunity.

Read the whole story in our client case study site.

Here are some screenshots of the Shufflepoint product using the API.

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

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