June 13, 2007
New Google Analytics Features
As first reported on the Official Google Analytics Blog, and then picked up pretty much everywhere else other than our own blog here, Google Analytics has seen its first minor feature update since the launch of the new user interface. While we certainly weren't first to break the news†, due mostly to putting the finishing touches on our updated Google Analytics training series, I did want to post my top three favorite improvements after the jump.
- Hourly Reporting, on the advice of pretty much anyone who had ever used the hourly report from the initial Google Analytics interface. For those who frequented the Google Analytics usenet group, the lack of this handy feature was a huge point of contention. Now we can move on to bigger and better complaints, right, Robbin? ;)
- Increase in the number of data rows per page, because occasionally it's helpful to see a big chunk of your data all together (and even more helpful to be able to export more than a hundred lines to to PDF).
- Bounce Rate Percent Change color coding, because green is good and red is baaad. It's nice that I no longer need to explain to our clients that numbers in in green are good, except for bounce rate, where red is good... but red is bad for everything else. Now the color coding is universal.
You've also got clickable URLs in the reports (see the image above), which make it easy to quickly access a page on your site from the report. Cross segmenting by network location is possible, and there's a tighter, easier AdWords integration. Take a look at the full list of changes.
This isn't the end of improvements for Google Analytics. Keep using the new interface and keep making suggestions. If you've got a blog, post your wishlist. Enter Robbin's contest. Post your biggest gripes or favorite new features in the comments below, and we promise to take them to heart and keep passing them on to Google.
† Second to the official post, my blog reader gives that credit to Jordan from Marketing Pilgrim, who must check her feed reader more often than me... which is no small feat.




