Google Analytics , reporting on website traffic and performance for a few web properties is a straightforward task. However, if your company manages hundreds of web properties, delivering useful and timely reports can become a significant challenge. For many, the only apparent solution is to manually export analytics data for each web property, then combine and compare that data to answer relevant business questions. It’s a slow and costly process and you spend most of your time creating reports instead of carrying out meaningful analysis.Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) faced precisely this challenge when it made the decision to use GA Data Grabber by AutomateAnalytics.com . GA Data Grabber works within Excel and uses the Google Analytics API . Users create or choose reports and GA Data Grabber automatically retrieves the Google Analytics data from any number of websites. And with multi-login capabilities, users can seamlessly combine data between Google Analytics profiles that reside under different Google Accounts.Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on any set of metrics.Public Broadcasting Service explains the challenges that PBS faced and how GA Data Grabber was able to help. “The PBS.org and PBSKIDS.org web sites are made up of hundreds of individual companion sites to broadcast programs. From a business perspective, there is a need to evaluate performance of individual program sites relative to each other.” As is common for many large organizations, PBS has separate Google Analytics accounts for each program site. “While multiple accounts works well to evaluate the site content and performance, it makes it difficult to look at all of the sites side-by-side without a lot of manual effort. Our previous attempts to create this type of report were time-consuming and often subject to data input errors.”GA Data Grabber Google Analytics API is by far the easiest to develop for. It’s logically structured and flexible, the documentation is excellent, and it’s easy to get help through the forum. I’ll certainly continue developing for the Google Analytics API. I’ve expanded to other APIs as well, but Google Analytics is still by far the most important one for my business.”Google Analytics App Gallery and can be downloaded from the GA Data Grabber website.Google Analytics Developer Program .
In October, we made Google Webmaster Tools available to all users in Google Analytics, allowing everyone to surface Google search data in new Search Engine Optimization reports. Starting today, Webmaster Tools will update how they calculate data to make it better match expectations about what a search engine ranking really means. An example calculation How will this affect my Google Analytics data? Historical data will not change. Note that the change in calculation means that the Average Position metric will usually stay the same or decrease, corresponding to the same or improved search ranking.
The Google Analytics Team has always supported the promotion of analytics education and professional development. We’d like to share this guest post by Wendy Greco & Eric Peterson from Analysis Exchange - an initiative designed to provide hands-on training opportunities for aspiring web analytics professionals while providing free web data analysis to the entire nonprofit community. Web Analytics Demystified looked at this problem from both angles and decided to create a solution - The Analysis Exchange . The Analysis Exchange pairs a non-profit organization with pair of web analysts --- one a student wanting the experience and the other a mentor with years of direct work in the field. The trio work together to have the student learn to use Google Analytics to “tell a story” with the data about how the non-profit can better meet their business goals. No cost means it is accessible to all non-profits
Nearly 100% of the non-profits we work with already have it installed
Our students find Google Analytics incredibly easy to learn
Our mentors, even if they don’t use Google Analytics day-to-day, pick it up immediately
The Analysis Exchange - who are interested in supporting this initiative.www.analysis-exchange.com or write our Executive Director Wendy Greco directly at wendy.greco@analysis-exchange.com .Posted on behalf of Wendy Greco & Eric Peterson
You may have already heard that Google is rolling out a new main privacy policy on March 1. With these changes, the privacy policy will be easier to read, and will help us create one beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google products and services. The new privacy policy makes it clear that if you’re signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services - helping us treat you as a single user across all our products. (To read more about the new privacy policy, check out the Official Google Blog post here .) We know you may have questions about how this affects you and your Google Analytics data, so want to take this opportunity to explain.data sharing settings , which you control directly. You can still choose how much, if any, of your website’s data to share with Google to help us improve our products, provide anonymous, aggregate statistics, or make enhanced features like Conversion Optimizer available to you. Your website data will not be used for purposes other than those that you specify in your settings, which you may change at any time. You can find more information about data sharing settings here . privacy policy changes and our data sharing options.
When I started Urchin Software with a few colleagues back in 1998, it was hard to imagine the scale and impact that Urchin and Google Analytics would eventually have. And yet, I remember rolling out the first version of Urchin to our customers and being blown away by the response. It was clear that Urchin was filling a fundamental need to understand customer engagement in a new medium. Suddenly, it made the intangible packets of traffic flying invisibly all over the world very tangible. Urchin Website .
As investment in digital marketing increases, data and insight continue to be critical assets for marketers and content owners. If 2012 is the year to develop your measurement and optimisation skill set, we have a range of resources to help you.Individual Qualification with Google Analytics www.google.com/analytics/iq. Live Training & Events partner network who offer a range of courses and live training to help you through the basic and advanced capabilities of GA. Google certified trainers run regular 101 , 201 and 301 seminars - you can find a Seminars For Success calendar here for North America, Australia and the UK.GAUGE events. This series is hosted by our partner network and is a great way to learn from experts within the network and within other companies likes yours. The next event takes place in San Francisco on March 8-9 where Phil Mui, Group Product Manager and other members of the product team will share some of our newest developments and maybe even hint at what’s in store in 2012.Online Resources & Best Practices help centre and also have a vibrant forum. If you prefer watching to reading, visit the Google Analytics YouTube channel for a range of educational videos and webinars covering our latest feature releases.
Since May of last year we’ve been working on a new version of Google Analytics and quickly adding new features and functionality to provide you with fast access to the insights you need.multi-channel measurement , real-time analytics, flow visualization and improved device reporting to name a few. Our goal was to create a faster, more intuitive platform for the future and I think we’ve met many of these goals.email scheduling and PDF export as a top priority, alongside profile copying and dashboard sharing - and want to let you know that we’ll only fully be moving over to the new version once these are in place.survey .
The Google Analytics Forum is a community of people like you, who enjoy exploring making full use of the features of Google Analytics and also enjoy sharing their knowledge within the community. It’s a place where you can share expertise or seek out answers. It’s also a great way to escalate bugs and critical issues. Googlers such as myself and many of our Google Analytics Certified Partners are monitoring and can provide speedy help and feedback. link to the Google Analytics forum using the new platform. The most popular forum features - including levels and marking a best answer - will continue to be available in the new forum. The old forum will be archived and any links to old forum content will redirect automatically to the corresponding content in the new forum.Here’s a getting started guide so you can learn about some of the new features. PPC_Guru ) and Bronwyn Vourtis (Whims ) for attending the event. Thanks also to Rachaell and Nayan for continued involvement in the community and to all of you who have provided feedback and participated in testing. We’ll continue to listen to your feedback to improve the platform and ensure the migration goes smoothly.
In 2011, we saw marketing follow the consumer to more screens and more platforms - from apps to mobile sites to social networks to tablets. And in response the analytics industry made strides to unify this complex picture for marketers through device and platform specific analytics, and to connect the dots to measure and value the multi-channel customer path . opting in to share their data with Google , there was a 63% jump in the monthly volume of online transactions from December 2010 to December 2011, and on average, the number of ecommerce transactions grew about 1.2% every week in 2011. Last year it became more important than ever for businesses to make sure their online presence and digital campaigns were in check, and that they were measuring what matters.Mobile shines on the mainstage It’s been said that 2011 was the year that mobile turned a corner, and consumers armed with their smartphones show no sign of turning back. In fact, aggregate numbers from websites opting to share their data with Google show us that in the last four months of 2011, weekly volume of mobile visits jumped 40%, with mobile traffic growing at an average of 2% every week. And the weekly share of mobile transactions on overall ecommerce grew 60% in the same timeframe.Measuring social media ROI becomes a reality MarketingSherpa , only 20% of CMOs think social media marketing produces measurable ROI, while 62% consider it to be a promising tactic that will eventually yield ROI. off-site activity , enhanced campaign tracking and referral analytics, 2012 is the year that social analytics comes to life. Moving beyond conversions to a cohesive view of the customer Right ad, right time - applying analytics in real time Data will become more actionable
