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!

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,

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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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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.

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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" »

Google Analytics allows you to create numerous filters. So how do you know which ones you need to implement for your site? Well, one you might want to explore is a lowercase filter. So what is a lowercase filter and what precisely does it do?

Lowercase filters change the selected field to all lowercase letters. If duplicate entries of the same page are appearing in your reports, one that contains uppercase letters and one that does not, you probably should set your lowercase filter. For example, if you have a page on your site that can be accessed by going to www.mysite.com/Products.htm but you could also access the same page by typing www.mysite.com/products.htm Google Analytics would track these as two separate pages.

Obviously, if these are the same page they should be tracked as a single entry in Google Analytics. Therefore, creating a lowercase filter will change the former URI to all lowercase letters. This can greatly affect your Google Analytics reports and prevent duplicate entries from appearing.

So how do you set up a lowercase filter?

Within Google Analytics on the Add Filter to Profile page select the filter type Custom. Then Click the radio button next to the lowercase filter. Select the filter field that you want to apply the lowercase filter to and click Finish. Your new lowercase filter has been applied! NOTE: This will only affect the data from this point forward, not the historical data that has already been collected. Your filtered results will begin to show up in the reports from this point forward.

So in the above example the lowercase filter was applied to the request URI but you can apply the lowercase filter to other fields. If you apply the filter to the Campaign Term field it will prevent, for example Cars, cars, and CARS from showing up as different fields within the keyword reports. You can also apply the lowercase filter to the User Defined Value to prevent duplicate entries with those as well.

Hopefully this has given you a quick insight into lowercase filters and how useful they can be for your site.

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Today, Google announced new benchmarking functionality within Google Analytics. Combined with a new data-sharing option, this will allow Google Analytics users to compare their site's data against aggregate data from other sites in various industries. These two new features are in beta, but should begin to show up in all Google Analytics accounts throughout the day.

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Also briefly mentioned was the unveiling of the Audio Ads integration, with an official blog post to come tomorrow.

For more information, check out the official announcement at the Google Analytics blog, the benchmarking FAQs, and the data-sharing FAQs.

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It's hard to get things right the first time. You may come up with a brilliant plan for your Google Analytics setup and think that you've thought of everything, only to have the data start coming in and realize that things are not looking quite like you hoped they would. Or perhaps your analytics just need a modification and you need to change your goal steps or create new ones. When these kinds of things happen, you may need to alter your Google Analytics profile settings.

And that's OK. While we recommend setting up a "sandbox" profile where you can test what effect changes to your profile might have on your data before editing your main profile, at some point you'll have to make those changes live in order to reap the benefits of cleaner, better data. When this happens, you will want to record those changes.

Continue reading "Keep Track of Changes to Your Profiles" »

In mid-October Google announced the beta release of the new tracking code: ga.js. Then, in December, they released the new code to all Google Analytics users. So you might have noticed, within Google Analytics, that there is now a tab labeled 'New Tracking Code' within the Profile Settings > Tracking Code section.

You may be thinking, "Why should I care?" Well, here are a few reasons why the migration to ga.js is practically inevitable for those of you who want to remain on the cutting edge of the latest and greatest technology. And why, for those of you who don't want to rock the boat, it may not be necessary to switch over... yet.

With the upgrade to ga.js you will have access to several new features including Event Tracking, and Outbound Link Tracking.

Event Tracking will be especially useful for those who have Flash based sites, or for those who use multimedia on their site. An "event" is an action that a user takes on a webpage that doesn't necessarily involve a new pageview. Examples include clicks on buttons or images, navigation in embedded Flash, or Ajax events, like moving a map in Google Maps, or applying a label in Gmail.

Outbound Link Tracking will tell you which links visitors clicked on your site that direct them to another site without the manual tagging. This means that instead of adding urchinTracker to each and every one of your outbound links to see where visitors are going once they leave, you don't have to do anything.

A few other benefits of the updated ga.js include:

• Faster, smaller source file - which will allow for a faster download time


• Object oriented - instead of using functions


• Automatic detection of HTTPS


• Increased namespace safety

One question seems to keep surfacing about the migration, so I will go ahead and address that now. The new Google Analytics tracking code (ga.js) will NOT work with the previous tracking code (urchin.js). They are not compatible, so all pages on your site should be updated with the new code.

So the bottom line: Should you switch to ga.js?

Google is still supporting the urchin.js tracking code, and sources predict that that they'll continue support for another 12-18 months, so if you're happy with the current features and you're not worried about any new releases to ga.js (and the potential discontinuation of support down the line), then you're probably OK for another few months, at least. Eventually, though, you're going to need to switch to ga.js.

If you want event tracking and automatic outbound link tracking, as well as any new features that are released in the future, and you're willing to spend a little time and resources on getting everything set up properly, then you might want to consider joining the migration.

If you're looking for help, Google has written a reference guide for switching over to the code in pdf format, and if you need any assistance from ROI Revolution, an Authorized Google Analytics support partner, be sure to take a look at our Google Analytics support plans and we'll get you on the path to a seamless migration.

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Almost a year and a half ago, I posted a brief guide on the different match types that Google Analytics uses to define goals. For something that is so integral to a successful Google Analytics configuration, goals are easily one of the more confusing aspects of the tool, and we get more questions about goals than perhaps anything else.

Last week, Google quietly updated the Google Analytics Goal Settings page. They rearranged the order of the fields, and also clarified something that has long been somewhat under-emphasized. In the explanation text for the Goal URL:

For the goal page "http://www.mysite.com
/thankyou.html" enter "/thankyou.html"

Previously, the example text basically told users to just copy and paste the entire URL from their conversion page. Now, only the Request URI is required.

Actually, this isn't a change to the way that Google Analytics recognizes goals. It's always worked this way, targeting only the Request URI. It would simply discard anything in the Goal URL that wasn't part of the Request URI (anything after the dot-com, basically) and match what was left.

Now that the official recommendation is to use the Request URI, it looks like old-school goals are still backwards-compatible and will function with the whole URL. But for future reference, for a goal URL of:

http://www.mysite.com/thankyou.html

You only need to put:

/thankyou.html

Into the Goal URL field.

How do you use Google Analytics' Goal Matches? Are you a regular expressions junkie, or do you stick to tried-and-true exact match? Leave us a comment!

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If you've done research on excluding internal traffic from your Google Analytics reports, then you've probably heard words like "user defined variable", "dynamic or static IP address", and "orphaned web page." While you may want to become familiar with these terms someday, the truth is that not everyone is a webmaster.

What's my point? Well, I'm not sure if anyone's come up with this before, and quite frankly I wouldn't be surprised as this method is very easy, but here's a quick and easy way to exclude any kind of internal traffic from your reports, regardless of IP-whats-its. All you have to know is how to write an email.

Here's how:

Continue reading "Excluding Internal Traffic the Easy Way" »

Dear Michael,
I just implemented AdWords autotagging for my website, and now my organic Google traffic has dropped dramatically. What gives? Is Google Analytics ruining my search rankings? Who do I blame for this? Can you fix it?

Okay. Calm down and breathe. There's nothing to worry about.

First, the bad news: your organic search traffic wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

But, the good news: now that you've turned on autotagging, your Google Analytics profile is more accurate than it has ever been.

Continue reading "Tales of Overanalysis: My Organic Traffic Has Tanked!" »

This post is dedicated to all of those hard working webmasters out there who have enough to worry about as it is without the marketing staff breathing down their necks about campaign tracking and revenue analysis and all sorts of other stuff.

Look, I'm a code monkey, too. I understand the dilemma. No one likes to ask permission from fifteen different people before they make the slightest change to a site.

But here's the thing: Google Analytics is script-based, and it collects live traffic and conversion data. If it's not on a page, and someone visits that page, they don't get counted. It's not rocket science (but I'm no rocket scientist, so I must defer to someone who is).

So if you know that the site you're working with has the Google Analytics script on it, then think twice before you make any major changes. Here's a quick list of what to consider...

Continue reading "More Work For the Webmasters" »

Click Here For Part 2 - Tracking Emails
Click Here For Part 3 - Through the Wormhole

Are you bidding on your brand name in AdWords, YSM, or AdCenter? If you are, there's a good chance your return on investment for those specific keywords is very good. People searching for your specific brand know what they want and are ready to convert, while your costs remain low. But what if these people are coming back to your site after already having visited from another keyword - maybe one that's costing you much more money?

Well, there's a way to limit conversions attributed to your branded keywords, so that you can get information on the original keyword source.

Continue reading "Using utm_nooverride Part 1 of 3 - Branding" »

One of the new features of Google Analytics that hasn't really seen too much press in the past month (has it really been that long?) is the new and improved graph and chart view. These graphs and charts don't vary drastically from those seen in the old interface, but they're still different enough to warrant a bit of explanation.

Basically, all of the data tables in Google Analytics have alternate graph displays for easier visual analysis of your data. Accessing these additional reports is easy. There's a series of little "Views" buttons at the top right of your data table, and each button offers you a new view for your data.

More info on each view after the jump.

Continue reading "Google Analytics Graphs and Charts" »

Since the new Google Analytics interface has become widely available, the people we talk to generally share a few worries and misconceptions about the new interface and what it means for them. Here are the top three misconceptions about the new interface that we hear:

Misconception #1: Oh NO - there is no conversion data!

First of all, take a nice, deep breath. When people start cruising around the new interface, they don't see any conversion data in their reports and have a mini panic-attack. In the old interface you have a handful of set metrics that show up in the right-hand columns on each report, some of which include conversion metrics.

The reason people can't find the conversion data is because in the new interface you have the 3 tabs:
'Site Usage' tab
'Goal Conversion' tab
'Ecommerce' tab

Because the 'Site Usage' tab is the first tab you see and it doesn't include conversion data, some people assume there just isn't any conversion data there, period.

The new format actually gives you a much wider variety of choices on available data, including (but not limited to) conversion data. Surprise! You just have to know where to look.

Continue reading "Top Three Misconceptions of the New Google Analytics Interface" »

You may have read my previous article on the subject of combining Google Website Optimizer with Google Analytics. With the new Google Analytics interface, of course, there are some changes I'd like to address.

First things first, the integration remains unchanged. You can refer back to my previous post for these instructions.

Finding the information, however, is now a little different. Since there is no more Dynamic Content report (*sniff*), finding the data takes a couple steps. But don't fret, it's not too bad.

Here's how:

Continue reading "Website Optimizer Integration in the New Analytics Interface" »

The new Google Analytics interface has so many great new features that using it is almost like a treasure hunt - you never know what you'll discover next!

Personally, my favorite new feature so far is the email functionality. I don't know about you, but I don't look into Google Analytics nearly as often as I'd really like to (let's keep that between us, though, ok?).

Apparently I'm not alone. According to a Jupiter report, "Key Performance Indicators - Using Analytics to Drive Action", a stunningly large percentage of companies don't bother to distribute analytic reports to the people within the company who can use them!

Less then 20% of the companies surveyed distribute analytics data to merchandising departments for review on a regular basis, and only 53% of marketing teams review analytics data. But surely the executives pay attention to the analytics data?

Actually, only 41% of executives review web analytics data.

And that is why the new email function is my favorite. You can use the little 'email' button found under the title of the report, and there you will find 3 tabs: Send Now, Schedule, or Add to Existing.

Continue reading "Hallelujah! The Best New Google Analytics Feature" »