Yogi Land» analytics

Google Analytics Enhancements for Mobile Apps

Yogi Liman — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:06:00 +0000

November was a busy time in Google Analytics. In particular, the Mobile App Tracking Team has a few things to announce.

EasyTracking Library – automatic session management, better integration with Google Analytics SDK
Updated Google Analytics SDK – More reliable method for sending hits, Android Market referral issue fixed, available via the Android SDK manager
More samples – new open source application aimed to help reduce the ramp up time for new developers who want to track their apps

EasyTracker Library
We’ve created EasyTracker libraries for both iOS and Android. �The EasyTracker library will enable tracking of your application down to the Activity (or UIViewController for iOS) level with almost no coding required on your part. �See the ReadMe file and source code for details. These Libraries are intended for use with the standard Google Analytics SDKs and should make it very easy to add standard tracking to your applications.

Another advantage to using the EasyTracker library is session management. �As many developers know, it’s not always easy to determine whether your application is active and when to start a new session. �The EasyTracker library handles this for you. �It will determine when your application has been put into the background and will start a new session automatically.

The Android version of the Library not only provides for easy tracking, but also ensures that all calls to GoogleAnalyticsTracker are done off the main UI Thread. �Using this library should address responsiveness issues some Android developers have seen using the Google Analytics SDK.

We’ve adapted the Android Notepad sample application to use the EasyTracker library, just to show you how easy it can be.

You can find the libraries and sample applications at
http://code.google.com/p/analytics-api-samples/. �Check the downloads section for the libraries. �The source for the libraries is available in subversion as well. �Drill down into trunk/src/tracking/mobile/android/EasyTracker for Android and trunk/src/tracking/mobile/ios/EasyTracker for iOS. �The Notepad sample application is there as well. �We’ve released them as open source and contributions to making them better are welcome.

Check the ReadMe files in the libraries themselves for more information on how to use them.

New Versions of Google Analytics SDK for Android and iOS
We’ve released version 1.4 for iOS and version 1.4.2 for Android. �The iOS version of the SDK has one new feature. �Both versions contain several bug fixes as well. �Read on for details.

iOS
We’ve added a new method, dispatchSynchronously, that blocks while it dispatches hits. �It won’t return until the hits sent have either been acknowledged by the Google Analytics servers or the specified timeout period has elapsed. �This provides a more reliable method for sending hits before your application terminates or goes into the background.

We’ve also addressed several memory leaks and crashes reported against the SDK.

More details on the new version of the SDK can be found at http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/mobile/ios.html.

Android
The Android SDK will now handle referrals from the Android Market properly. �This applies to autotagging as well.

We’ve fixed several other bugs in the Android SDK. �Check out the details at http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/mobile/android.html.

Google Analytics SDK now available via the Android SDK Manager
We’ve added the Google Analytics SDK to the Android SDK Manager. �You can download the latest versions using the Android SDK Manager instead of checking the website for updates.

Of course, this only applies to the Android version of the SDK.

MobilePlayground
We’ve released an open source application for both iOS and Android that exercises all the APIs for Google Analytics that are available to Mobile Application developers. �You can find them at trunk/src/tracking/mobile.

New Home for the Mobile Tracking Documentation
The Mobile Tracking documentation has moved. �It now resides with the rest of the Google Analytics tracking documentation. �Check it out at http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/mobile/overview.html.

Reporting Problems and Feature Requests
We really value your feedback. If you are having problems with the SDKs, let us know by posting them on the Google Analytics issues website at http://code.google.com/p/analytics-issues/issues/list. �Use the component MobileTracking when entering an issue or looking through the list for issues already reported against the Mobile App SDKs.

Please stay tuned for more exciting news regarding Mobile Application Tracking with Google Analytics.

Jim Cotugno, Mobile Application Tracking Rockstar

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How to Time Your Facebook Posts to Reach the Most Fans

Yogi Liman — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:37:23 +0000

Jeff Widman co-founded PageLever to provide better Facebook analytics for marketers. PageLever measures more than 650 million Facebook fans across sites like YouTube and MTV. Jeff has been cited as an expert in Facebook analytics by Mashable, AdAge, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, InsideFacebook, AllFacebook, etc.

I get asked all the time, “How frequently should I post on my Facebook page? When is the best time to post?”

Answer: Post whenever the most recent status update for your page stops showing up in your fans’ News Feeds.

If you post often, you will see an immediate spike in News Feed impressions, but it’s generally not worth the cost in lost fans. When your fans see two status updates from you in their News Feeds, they’ll likely get annoyed, and will consequently unsubscribe or un-fan. There are few exceptions to this rule.

If you post too infrequently, you’re missing out on opportunities to reach your fans. Over the course of a year, a page with 10,000 fans that posts only half as often as they could misses more than 1 million chances to get their content in front of a hyper-targeted Facebook audience. The larger your fan page, the more often you should be posting — without annoying your fans.

The kicker: Each post performs differently. Some posts last ten hours, and some posts last thirty hours.

Calculate the average post lifetime by using the method below, but remember it’s just that — an average. To get really in-depth, figure the average post lifetime for photos vs. articles, or the average lifetime when you post Thursdays at 3 p.m. vs. Saturdays at 10 a.m. However, it’s still just an average; each post is unique, so you can never exactly predict how it will perform.

How do you know when a post stops appearing in your fans’ News Feeds?

The good news is that when you track your posts’ performance, you’ll be able to see, in real-time, when that post drops out of the News Feed. If it flops five hours sooner than you expected, then immediately stick up a new post.

Each status update drops out of different fans’ News Feeds at different times, depending on how long Facebook’s algorithm EdgeRank calculates that particular fan will be interested in that particular status update. Then, the best we can do is look at how each status update performs across all your fans’ News Feeds.

You’ll actually see a slowdown in new impressions, clicks, likes and comments as a post starts dropping out of News Feeds. The following graphs show cumulative numbers, so when the graph flattens, the post has dropped out of News Feeds.

Each of these metrics has pros and cons.

1. Impressions per-post: Impressions per-post is a single aggregate count of how many times a particular status update has been viewed. Facebook updates this number as more and more people view the post; however, it often won’t update for several hours at a time when Facebook’s computers are calculating for millions of posts across millions of fan pages. On the bright side, when it works, it’s great — you can literally watch as your post gets viewed by fans.

2. Comments per-post: All the comments on any status update are time-stamped, so you can measure on a minute-by-minute basis exactly when a fan saw the status update. Unfortunately, most status updates receive so few comments that there aren’t enough data points to determine whether your fans are choosing not to comment or simply aren’t seeing the post in their News Feeds.

3. Likes per-post: In general, this is the most accurate way to see when your status update starts dropping out of News Feeds. Facebook updates the post’s like count in near real time, so it’s more reliable than the post impression count. And because posts tend to get more likes than comments, the data presents an accurate picture of how long a post stayed in News Feeds. On the other hand, likes aren’t time-stamped, so you have to check the like count regularly to see when new likes are added.

So how do I actually measure?

Post a status update. Every hour, record the number of impressions, likes and comments. Figure out when the rate of new impressions or likes slows down.

Try recording all the raw data in Excel, then graph the data just like you see above. Visually estimate the post lifetime based on when the graph flattens out.

After you calculate the post lifetime for 10-20 posts, you’ll start to generate an average post lifetime unique to your fan page.

What’s the average post lifetime?

I don’t know.

However, I surveyed 20 posts across five fan pages that had 2 million+ fans, and calculated an average post lifetime of 22 hours, 51 minutes. Theoretically, this implies most fan pages shouldn’t post more than once a day.

I strongly recommend keeping track of your posts in real-time because post lifetimes vary widely, even across the same fan page. In my sample of twenty posts, the shortest post lasted only 10 hours, while the longest post lasted a full 50 hours!

If you weren’t tracking those posts, you would have been invisible in the News Feed for 13 hours when the post flopped at the 10-hour mark. Similarly, you could have delayed your next post when the high-performing post showed no sign of slowing down.

Lastly, feel free to experiment and break the rules.

You won’t know if your fans respond better to a different posting strategy until you try it. Use these analytics to augment your intelligence, not replace it.

Happy posting!

Image courtesy of Flickr, kaysha

More About: analytics, contributor, Facebook, features, Marketing, Social Media

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Another Holiday Gift For The Practitioner

Yogi Liman — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 01:22:00 +0000

We hope your holiday season is going well, and you're full of good cheer and data driven egg nog (which doesn't really exist unless you love web analytics and have imbibed too much egg nog).

For those of you who really do dig web analytics and use Google Analytics specifically – you're going to really like our next gift. It's from the Santa Claus of the web analytics industry, Avinash Kaushik, the analytics evangelist here at Google. Avinash has written a must-read post that you should curl up with next to a roaring fire while you have time to relax over the holidays. In the post, he's basically done a ton of work for you. It's called 3 Awesome, Downloadable, Custom Web Analytics Reports and it showcases the power of Google Analytics and custom reports. In Avinash's words,

I love custom reports. They allow us to step away from the oppression of standard reports (/data pukes) and bring an increased amount of relevancy, calm and focus to our day-to-day work and to our beloved data consumers.

As you may know, you can create your own reports within Google Analytics. Here's a help article from our blog explaining how. In Avinash's typical style, he makes powerful analysis techniques accessible and understandable, and the best part is that he's created the reports for you allowing you to take action right away. You can click on a link that populates the report template right within your Google Analytics profile. Thanks for the holiday gift Avinash.

To give you a sneak peak and get you salivating to read Avinash's post, the three reports are:

Page Efficiency Analysis Report
Visitor Acquisition Efficiency Analysis Report.
Paid Search Performance Analysis Micro-Ecosystem!

If you're doing web analytics, these reports will be of use both educationally, and practically. Enjoy, and stay tuned for one more gift from Avinash.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

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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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