Faithful Analytics blog readers, I don't want to bore or alienate any of you—a diverse and geographically disperse group of intelligentsia—but today's blog post draws on something close to my heart: a professional basketball team called the Boston Celtics. Stay with me, just for a few more sentences. All will become clear ...Webmaster Tools and Website Optimizer , two other free Google tools for website-owners. The first helps you improve your site's visibility in Google search results, and the second helps increase your conversion rate once visitors arrive on your site.posted a couple of months ago about how you can identify your high-value, low-performing pages with Google Analytics, then test and optimize them with Website Optimizer to improve your conversion rates.Register to attend In the webinar, team members will introduce each product for newcomers, highlight recent product developments, and discuss the benefits of using all three products together. And when you register, we'll also invite you to submit any questions you'd like the presenters to answer.
In case you didn't know about Google
Webmaster Central , take a look. It's a one-page resource linking to many of the tools Google offers to help you build and maintain an effective site, including Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, and Webmaster Tools, the trifecta, the big three, the three amigos, the
rule of three . Hope to see you at the webinar!
Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team
Anyone remember the previous Google Analytics interface? Here's a screenshot of the dashboard:new Google Analytics interface .Internal site search : We've always shown you which keywords people search to find your site. Now, internal site search tracking shows you how people search once they're already on your site. See the keywords and search-refinement keywords people use, and the pages from which they begin and end their searches. And, find out how search on your site affects site usage, conversion rates, and e-commerce activity. Here's a shot of the insights you can get with site search data (click to enlarge):Industry Benchmarking : With Benchmarking , you can compare your site data with site data from a variety of industry verticals. And the accompanying data-sharing settings let you control whether and how Google services interact with your data to enable and disable these features. Here's a screenshot (click to enlarge):New visualizations and analysis features : You can now view many reports by hour or day and graph data by day, week, or month. You can also graph two metrics against each other over time—we call it multi-line graphing. So, for example, you can compare the number of visitors vs. bounce rates for a certain week, or see whether visitors who come to a website through AdWords spend more or less time on your site than visitors overall. In this screenshot, we've chosen to look at visitors trending in weekly units as opposed to daily. This makes it easier to spot trends when looking at longer time periods. And we're looking at visits compared to conversions:New ga.js tracking code : Our new pagetag allows for a more flexibility and customization. Its just as easy to install as the old code, but allows more sophisticated users to track e-commerce transactions in a more readable way and take advantage of advanced tracking features. We've also added the Google Analytics codesite to help developers take advantage of documented customizations. Correlations with offline marketing with Google Audio Ads and TV Ads integrations : Audio Ads and TV Ads customers can now track whether their Google radio and TV campaigns sent additional traffic to their website based on when and where the ads run. Website Optimizer : Google's free multivariate website-testing tool is out of beta and available to everyone. And now you can even log in with your Google Analytics account. Urchin Software : If you have content behind a security firewall or on an intranet or internal network that prevents you from using Google Analytics, you might want to consider Urchin 6 . You can also track your website with Urchin and Google Analytics together. Support and Help Centers in eight additional languages : We've added Thai, Filipino, Indonesian, Czech, Hungarian, Portuguese (Portugal), Turkish, and Polish. This brings the number of Google Analytics supported languages to 25. Authorized Consultants (GAACs) : This is the year of the Authorized Consultant. We've added six new GAACs in the past few months, bringing our worldwide total to 51. We have also added Website Optimizer Authorized Consultant and Urchin Software Authorized Consultant networks. You : We have a sophisticated, engaged and vibrant user base from whom we're learning daily. We're so excited about the future: it's palpable at Google, and it all comes from you and our ecosystem of users, bloggers, consultants, and developers. We have many more new developments underway that I believe you'll enjoy so I hope you continue to stay engaged with this blog, our Google Group and our codesite .Posted by Brett Crosby, Group Manager, Google Analytics
Here's another practitioner-focused approach from James Tipton, one of our specialists in New York.www.example.com/products/awesomeproductpage.html?sid=ap5829g2k¶m=supervalue
Click into the "Profile Settings" page and then on "Edit" in the "Main Profile Settings Information" bar. Enter the query parameters you'd like to exclude in the "Exclude URL Query Parameters" field and click "Save Changes." duplicate profile . Then you can relax knowing you won't be caught off-guard.Site Search yet, do it today. It only takes seconds (OK, maybe a couple of minutes) but it's well worth the small effort needed.Posted by James Tipton, Google Analytics Team
Did we say, "Boot Camp for Google Analytics?" How does that work, one might ask? Do I have to get up at 5am to have someone yell at me about goals, funnels and filters, now repeat! Get that bounce rate DOWN mister! Conversion rate UP, lady! Now give me 5 industry benchmarking metrics and hit the showers.Online Marketing (OM) Boot Camp , hosted by EpikOne and co-sponsored by Google at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont.Avinash Kaushik , Ben Bullock and Alex Ortiz from the Google Analytics team, and Justin Cutroni, Seminars For Success instructor and author of Google Analytics Short Cut . beginners and advanced users, including agencies. The boot camp has various course levels on topics such as Adwords , Google Analytics and Website Optimizer .For more information and to register, visit www.OMBootCamp.com . Posted by Eva Woo, Google Analytics Team
There's nothing like a little healthy competition! When you reach a certain level of expertise at some discipline, adding a little competition against others can help you to develop new skills and improve your "game" more than anything else. And it can be a lot of fun!what Avinash says about bounce rate - it might be a good place to start, and you can see this metric clearly in almost every Google Analytics report.)Neil Mason , June Dershewitz , and Avinash Kaushik ), and prizes will be given for the most effective and insightful analyses. Here at the Google Analytics team, we might also might send a prize to the finalists, and also, we're hoping to do a blog post here after the championship where we'll name the contest winners and show the recommendations and insights they submitted. We're talking fortune and glory (cue "Indiana Jones" theme song) -- the techniques you use to analyze the data may be immortalized to inspire many a future analyst or marketer.member , which brings a lot of benefits such as discounts to industry events, informational newsletters and best practice guides, exposure to thought leaders and peers who also work in web analytics, and access to advanced instruction about website analysis techniques. The Championship started on June 1 and there is still plenty of time to do some analysis and submit an entry. You'll definitely come away a better user.page and FAQs .Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team
Hot on the heels of this March’s release of the Audio Campaigns report within Google Analytics, we’ve just added more offline-to-online reporting features: TV Campaigns reporting. This report represents a further integration between Google Analytics and AdWords, and another helpful tool for you to measure the online effects of offline marketing.AdWords TV Ads is an all-digital system that distributes advertisers' TV ads to participating channels nationwide. You can upload your TV ad—a video file—to your AdWords account and, with a few clicks, start a campaign by choosing from more than 90 nationwide TV stations to air the ad on. You can also specify the time of day and week, audience demographic, and type of program you'd like to target. If you need help creating a TV ad, you can find and connect with production specialists through our Ad Creation Marketplace. It’s a simple and streamlined process for TV advertising.linked with your Google Analytics account, you can easily see what happens to your online traffic while a TV spot is running. The current available TV metrics include:Impressions delivered Number of ad plays Cost CPM promotion in which Google will cover the cost of creating your TV ad through our Ad Creation Marketplace, up to $2000.Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team
We recently blogged about how you can use Google Analytics and Website Optimizer to identify your high value pages and set up experiments that will eliminate the guesswork from their design. Now that you're on the path to increased conversions and more efficient funnels, we thought we'd give you the low down on a new contest that might spark your interest.SMX Seattle conference , the Google Website Optimizer team announced the launch of the Google Website Workout contest . The idea behind the contest is simple: they're looking to help four businesses "pump up" their websites so they can get more sales, leads, or signups. Their consultants will work with the four winners to increase site performance by identifying and testing which combinations of page design, copy, and graphics yield the highest conversion rates.contest site and answer a few easy questions about why your site needs a workout. They're only accepting entries through June 17th, so don't wait to enter . Check out the short video below for more details:Posted by John Stona, Website Optimizer Team
