We're happy to announce the launch of two related new Google Analytics features: a beta version of industry benchmarking and a data-sharing settings page. Both are designed to give our customers more choice and better control over their data. We are also launching an integration with Audio Ads today, which we'll discuss in more detail in tomorrow's post. All of these features will begin appearing in customer accounts today, though benchmarking reports may take up to a couple weeks to show data.We believe this data will provide actionable insights by providing context for users to understand how their site is doing. For example, if you have a travel website and you get a spike in traffic on Mondays, you may want to know whether other travel sites get that same spike on Mondays.You can also compare your site against an industry vertical different than your own. For example, you might see that your industry's traffic dips at certain times of the year while another industry's traffic increases. Based on that information, you may wish to explore cross promotional opportunities to drive traffic back and forth. benchmarking FAQs in the Google Analytics help center.customers can choose whether to opt in or opt out of sharing their Analytics data. To be clear, we are not sharing individual data with competitors; we bucket data into industry verticals and then anonymize and aggregate the data . Once you opt in, it may take a couple weeks for the reports to populate. data-sharing options FAQs in the help center.Posted by Brett Crosby, Group Manager, Google Analytics
