By Jeremy Aube, Google Analytics Support Tech

Have you ever gone to segment the content detail of a page by source/medium, only to find that you can segment by source or medium, but not both? Well those days of frustration are over, thanks to a GreaseMonkey script I wrote just the other day.

Not only that, but you will also be able to segment by transaction, adgroup, and referral path anytime a segmenting opportunity comes up. Now you can see exactly which transactions are attributed to each source, medium, source/medium, keyword, campaign, new or returning visitors, and more. I'm sure everyone can think of some good uses for this.

To expand your segmenting abilities, first download the latest greasemonkey firefox add-on. Then download my script right here. You should be able to just click and install it if you already have the GreaseMonkey firefox add-on installed.

A couple notes here about the script:

1. If you segment by one of the fields, then try and segment by another field, you may find that your options are once again limited. To fix this, segment by "none" first and then you should get the additional fields back.
2. You can also segment by Product, Product SKU, and Product Category, but this may not work as well as anticipated. If that's the case, you can drill down into a product and segment by source/medium or whatever report you were looking at and see the data from the other direction.

If you've found this tool useful or if you have any suggestions for improvement, please leave a comment. Thanks!

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By Kathy Scott, Marketing Associate

Be sure to take advantage of our LIVE in person Seminars for Success where we share our Google Analytics™ knowledge with you!

When we attend conferences the remark we hear most often is that finding the time for an analytics course is the most difficult part. We also hear that some people just "get it" better IN PERSON. Well, we're always trying to make analytics training more accessible, so in answer to these comments, we're thrilled to offer Analytics Seminars for Success for those of you who really WANT tracking on your website to get the actionable data you NEED for key business decisions.

Stop letting your schedule get in the way! You can get the training you need during this live event. In these two full day sessions we cover a broad range of topics for those who only need user training on the different reports to implementing regular expressions on the technical side. For a full detailed list of all that's included in each session check out the content for the Introduction and Advanced sessions.

Don't pass up the opportunity to learn from the experts what you have to know about Google Analytics in one (maybe two) days!

--Location and Cost--

The seminar will be at the Westin O'Hare located in Rosemont, Illinois, minutes away from the O'Hare International Airport. The Westin provides complimentary shuttle service that departs the hotel approximately every 20 minutes. For the street address see http://www.roirevolution.com/analytics-seminar.

Each day costs $249 or $498 if you register for both sessions. The seminars will be a full day from 8am to 5pm EST on both June 2nd and 3rd. In order to keep the cost of the seminar as low as possible, lunch will not be provided, but morning and afternoon breaks will be offered.

Sign up quickly as registration will be limited due to space and the supplies that come packaged with the training seminar such as workbooks and tasty snacks during breaks. Space is restricted but we want YOU, so click over to register for the Seminars for Success! You can register right away, because even if you have to cancel, we can offer you a full refund up to 8 days before the event. After that you can transfer your registration to someone else if necessary.

Don't miss out! Register at least one week in advance to receive the $50 AdWords™ credit ($100 AdWords™ credit if you register for both sessions)* Google graciously offers to all Seminars for Success attendees!

http://www.roirevolution.com/promos/
analytics-seminar.htm#11

*Promotional credit must be applied to an AdWords account within 30 days of attending a seminar and is valid only for Google AdWords customers with self-managed signup. Advertisers will be charged for advertising that exceeds the promotional credit. Advertisers will need to suspend their ads if they do not wish to receive additional charges beyond the free credit amount. Subject to ad approval, valid registration and acceptance of the Google AdWords Program standard terms and conditions. The promotional credit is non-transferable and may not be sold or bartered. Offer may be revoked at any time for any reason by Google Inc. One promotional credit per AdWords account. New advertisers with self-managed signup accounts are subject to an $5 activation fee that will be deducted from the promotional credit. Expires 30 days after Advertiser's registered seminar session. Void where restricted or prohibited by law.

By Shawn Purtell, Google Analytics Support Tech

On Wednesday, Google announced that there will be a new Google Analytics interface for Blogger.

Measure Map, which was acquired by Google in February of 2007, has already done quite a bit for Google Analytics, which had its interface completely revamped. It looks like now the team is applying some of its lessons from that experience over to the blogosphere.

Although Google Analytics is already available to everyone, as a blog writer it's nice to have easy access to metrics that are tailored to your specific needs. Google seems to be addressing these needs with a new Google Analytics integration designed specifically for Blogger users.

According to Jeff Veen, Measure Map will be available 'as an integrated feature of both Google Analytics and Blogger'. That sounds pretty exciting to those of us that are obsessed with our blog statistics. And if the integration is being designed by the same folks that brought us the new Google Analytics interface, that means it should be simple to navigate and extremely useful.

This new interface is now in private beta (which means you probably won't notice it yet), but it looks like Google has plans to migrate all existing Measure Map users over to the new Google Analytics system. That means it could be a few months or even a year before it's rolled out to everyone - there's really no way to know at this stage. Since it's in beta, there's a good chance there will be some kinks to iron out.

So if you use Blogger for your blog, be sure to stay on the lookout for this neat new feature!

By Kathy Scott, Marketing Associate

It's officially here! Urchin 6 has been released for purchase today, April 16th, 2008!

Timeline: In October, Urchin 6 was released in limited beta and then in February, the Urchin 6 beta became available to the public and TODAY it's finally available for purchase!

Features: The interface is now similar to Google Analytics, and there is a greater focus on the usability aspect. Up to 1,000 profiles (domains), log sources, e-commerce, and campaign tracking are all included with this one time purchase.

Urchin 6 will include individual visitor-level tracking, report cross-segmentation and a full suite of geo-targeting reports! The campaign tracking features in Urchin 6 have also been re-engineered to be easier for somebody who is looking to track their SEO/SEM efforts.

Price: Urchin 6 is available for $2,995, and this price includes the full functionality of the software. That means you no longer need to worry about purchasing all those different types of modules. With Urchin 6, you can run e-commerce and campaign tracking functionality on multiple servers with no extra cost!

Upgrading: For owners of standard Urchin 5 licenses, Urchin Software is available for a discounted price. The amount paid for the Urchin 5 installation will be applied towards the cost of Urchin 6 Software. For example, if you purchased the base module of Urchin 5 for $895, then Urchin 6 Software would cost $2,100 ($2995 - $895).

Benefits: Those who might benefit from Urchin the most would be those who prefer to keep their data on machines they can control, those who would like to process historical data, those who need their data audited by third parties, and those who would like to track on an intranet.

ROI Revolution is an Urchin 6 reseller and so if you are ready for Urchin 6, go to www.roirevolution.com/urchin/urchin-six.htm to purchase or upgrade to Urchin 6 today!

Updates: If you would like to receive up to the minute information only about Urchin, sign up for the Urchin Update List!

By Michael Harrison, Google Analytics Support Tech

They grow up so fast, don't they? Today at ad:tech in San Francisco, Google announced that its multivariate testing tool, Google Website Optimizer, was coming out of beta and getting its own digs. Here's the official announcement.

Up until recently, the only way to use Google's free tool to test and improve your website's content was through a tab in AdWords. Now that Google Website Optimizer has moved on to the big leagues, it has a new standalone website independent of AdWords, where you can log on and start running tests right away.

Here's a look at the new multivariate walkthrough:

Read on for a list of new improvements and support options...

Continue reading "Google Website Optimizer Graduates from Google Beta" »

By Shawn Purtell, Google Analytics Support Tech
In Google Analytics, there are a couple different ways to match up the products you sell with the keywords that brought users to your site.

The first method is already built right in to Google Analytics. All you need to do is look under the Ecommerce section of your Google Analytics profile and expand the Product Performance section. There you'll find a report called Product Overview. In this report, you'll see a list of all the products that were sold for the given date range. You can click on an individual product and segment it by Keyword to see which keywords were responsible for the product sale.

But what about when you want to see things the other way around? In other words, for each keyword, can you see which products were sold? Well, if you use the above method, you'd have to segment each and every product. That's not very efficient.

Luckily, you can use filters to find this information pretty easily. Here's how:

Continue reading "Products and Keywords in Google Analytics" »

By Caitlin Minteer, Google Analytics Support Tech

Today Google released new graphing features to help make trends more visible. Previously, you could only view day-to-day trends in the timeline. Now in addition to viewing the data by day,

Click to enlarge

you can now see the data by week...

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and by month...

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This will help you compare long-term trends and make visualizing these trends much easier. You can also use these new graphing features to compare metrics. You can compare the last two weeks to the next two weeks, or even on a year to year basis.

These graphing features are found right below the date selection tool, above the timeline, and can be found on all reports within Google Analytics.

For more information on these features you can check out the Google Analytics Blog.

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By Caitlin Minteer, Google Analytics Support Tech
Everybody makes mistakes at some point, but there are ways to help prevent those mistakes from making their way into your Google Analytics reports.

With Google Analytics, you do not have the option to reprocess data like you do with log file analytics systems, so it's important that you are cautious with the changes you're making to your profiles.

If you set up a new filter incorrectly and no one notices for two weeks that you are collecting the wrong data, there is no way to go back and reprocess that data. It's gone and it's not coming back. Because of this, it is highly recommended that you make your filter, goal, and/or funnel changes to a test profile before making them to your main profile. By collecting the results in a test profile, you can gauge whether or not you are receiving the outcome you anticipated.

Likewise, if you create a new filter or goal, it will only affect the data from that point moving forward. For example, if you only want to include visitor traffic to a specific subdirectory, your historical data will still include visitor traffic to the rest of your site. This can also make things tricky with goals and funnels.

Also, if you create a new profile for an existing domain, you will not have access to historical data within that new profile. Profiles only collect data that is processed after they were created, so you may want to create several profiles at once if you think you may want to use the historical data in a later profile.

Recently, Google Analytics had introduced a new feature called Benchmarking, where you can see your stats compared to others' in your industry. If you decide to opt-in to data sharing, Google Analytics will include historical data up to a month before your opt-in date.

And for those of you who haven't switched over from urchin.js yet, historical data will be kept when you move your site over to ga.js, so don't worry.

So don't forget to test before you implement anything new to your main profile, and consider keeping a change log of the changes to your profiles. Remember that any changes you make won't change your historical data.

Find The Secret To Solid, Sustainable Improvements To Your Website
Learn the insider secrets to making more money from your website than ever before – Guaranteed! Get started right away with the Google Analytics Training Course..

By Jeremy Aube, Google Analytics Support Tech

One of the most important things to consider when trying to set up Google Analytics for your site is the integrity of your visitors' source/medium data. Keeping this data as accurate as possible will go a long way to helping you make useful decisions about your marketing efforts.

That being said, there is a silent enemy threatening to destroy the harmony of your Google Analytics data: the self-referral. You may first see it rear its ugly in head in the All Traffic Sources report. Not only is it rather disconcerting to see your own site as a visitor's referrer, but this entry in your reports represents irrevocably lost data. What's worse, you may even notice that the conversion rate for this segment of traffic is actually quite good. You may be putting lots of time and money in SEO, paid online adversing, e-mail campaigns and print ads, but when someone asks which of these was responsible for the conversion, you really don't know. Some of those sources may be getting overwritten by your self-referrals.

If your site has subdomains (domain.com and blog.domain.com, for instance), this might be causing the self-referrals to show up in your reports. The standard Google Analytics Tracking code is only good for sites with a single domain and no other structural complications. Anything beyond this and you'll need to make some kind of modification to the script. Subdomains are one such complication.

Whenever a visitor comes to your site, the Google Analytics Tracking Code on your pages asks the visitor's browser a question:

Continue reading "Tracking Subdomains" »

By Mark Curtis, PPC Account Manager

If you've been following this blog, you've likely heard several references to the Google Analytics Keyword Sleuth that Michael Harrison wrote back in April of 2007. This is a tool that anyone in paid search should be using. Basically, it captures and displays an ongoing list of new keywords and phrases straight from your customer's mind. We're often advised to "imagine what your customers are typing before they see your ads, then bid on those keywords." With the Keyword Sleuth in place, you don't have to imagine anything. They've already told you.

For a long time, Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others would not reveal exact search queries, and still don't for the most part. They'll tell you the bid keyword, but not the exact search query. In May 2007, Google stepped up and created the Search Query Performance Report (SQPR), which now shows this data within the Adwords reporting tab. There was a wave of excitement when Google released the SQPR, and it's become a popular report for Adwords users.

Both the Keyword Sleuth and the SQPR were developed to do essentially the same thing, but in reality, they can be worlds apart for the PPC manager. In explaining the Keyword Sleuth to other PPC professionals, I'm often asked how it's different than the Adwords SQPR. There is a lot that is different. A side-by-side comparison between these two tools is long overdue.

Speed
First, I'll run Google's SQPR. When that's done, I'll retrieve the same data using Michael's Exact Keyword Sleuth. In summary, I'm gathering the same data from the same Adwords campaign and the same time frame (one month), using two different methods. My teammate Matt will time it from the moment I touch the keyboard to the moment the report is viewable on screen.

The results...

Continue reading "Google Analytics Keyword Sleuth vs Search Query Performance Report" »