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The Google Analytics 360 integration with Google BigQuery gives analysts the opportunity to glean new business insights by accessing session and hit level data and combining it with separate data sets. Organizations and developers can analyze unsampled analytics data in seconds through BigQuery, a web service that lets developers and businesses conduct interactive analysis of big data sets and tap into powerful data analytics.

To help you learn or teach practical experience with analyzing analytics data in BigQuery, we are pleased to announce the availability of a Google Analytics sample dataset. This is accessible directly through the BigQuery interface. The dataset includes data from the Google Merchandise Store, an Ecommerce site that sells Google branded merchandise. The typical Google Analytics 360 data you would expect to see such as AdWords, Goals and Enhanced Ecommerce data can be queried. You can see the fields part of the export schema that you can query here.

Google Analytics Sample Dataset for BigQuery

When it comes to helping businesses ask advanced questions on unsampled Google Analytics data, we like to use BigQuery. Its fast and scalable for big data analytics. When providing trainings on the benefits of the Google Analytics 360 and BigQuery integration, there is nothing like having a high quality dataset with sufficient volume to be meaningful. That's why we are so pleased to see the public availability of a robust Google Analytics sample dataset with marketing and ecommerce data. Everyone can experience big data analytics!
- Doug Hall, Director of Analytics, Conversion Works

Self-Learning 
You can use the sample dataset to learn how granular information can be extracted from analytics data in BigQuery. We’ve created this guide to help you create queries to find answers to the following for the Google Merchandise Store:

• What is the average number of transactions per purchaser?
• What is the percentage of stock sold per product?
• What is the average bounce rate per marketing channel segmented by purchasers?
• What are the products purchased by customers who previously purchased a particular product?
• What is the average number of user interactions before a purchase?

Education Programs

If you’re an educator trying to teach others to use BigQuery, then we encourage you to use the sample dataset as a tool. You can use it to create task based assessments and other learning materials for your students. We’ve started to do just that by integrating it into our education courses.

The Analytics Academy provides an introduction to BigQuery in their Getting Started with Google Analytics 360 course. The Data Insights course by the Google Cloud team provides an in-depth look at BigQuery with practical exercises.

Access the Dataset
You can learn more about the dataset including how to get access in this help article. If you need some help, please let us know through the Advertiser Community. Share any feature requests or ideas to make the dataset more useful. We hope the dataset gives you a practical way to learn about the benefits of analysing Google Analytics data in BigQuery.

Happy analyzing!
Posted by Deepak Aujla, Program Manager, Google Analytics Solutions

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Google Optimize helps businesses determine which website experiences work best for their customers. With easy-to-use A/B testing capabilities, marketers can use Optimize to create and launch a test in minutes — and manage the entire process on their own.

A/B testing with tools like Optimize drives results. In a recent survey, 72% of marketers found A/B testing to be a highly valuable method for improving conversion rates.

But we’ve heard from businesses that while testing in Optimize is easy, setting it up could be easier. 

Good news: We’re introducing a new feature that helps make sure Optimize is set up and working the way it’s supposed to.

Let Optimize double-check your code 

With Installation Diagnostics, Optimize will automatically alert and advise you on potential issues with your Optimize code each time you create a test. At a glance, you’ll see if your Optimize setup is correct and if you’re ready to run a test.

Let’s say you create a new page on your site but forget to add the Optimize code. Later, when you are creating a test for that page, Optimize will tell you that the necessary code isn’t installed. You’ll have the opportunity to fix the issue and then launch your test. Moving forward, you can be confident that your test results won’t be disrupted by an incorrect setup.

Optimize will alert you about other issues too - including if Google Analytics code isn’t installed on a page, or if an old version of Analytics code is installed. Then you can make changes to ensure you’ll be able to measure the performance of your experiment. Learn more.

Try it yourself 

Today’s top businesses are testing their way to success. They’re valuing data over opinions. They’re constantly learning — even from failures and mistakes. And they’re using their findings to improve the customer experience.

Whether your business is big, small, or somewhere in between, you can follow their lead. Try Optimize now and get ready to gain deep insights about your customers so you can enhance their web experiences like never before.

Posted by Rotimi Iziduh, Product Manager, Google Optimize

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We're excited to announce that you can now survey people in over 50 countries around the globe with Google Surveys.

When we first launched Google Surveys in 2012 (we called ourselves Google Consumer Surveys back then), our goal was to put quality market research in the hands of businesses of all sizes. Market research was costly and time-consuming in those days, and that made it hard for many companies to make decisions based on what their customers were actually thinking.

Google Surveys made it easy to keep your finger on the pulse of your customers with fast, reliable insights from real people. Since then, we've continued making improvements to the product. We also launched Surveys 360, our enterprise version, with advanced targeting, reporting, and sharing features.

And now users of both versions can reach people in more than 50 countries. Wondering if your new product line should launch in Portugal? Stop guessing and find out. Lacking competitive intel in India? Not anymore. Trying to convince your boss that your idea is better? We can help with that.

"As a global company, we're especially excited about the targeting expansion to over 50 new countries. We'll be using Google Surveys to run consumer research and brand awareness studies in markets that have historically been difficult for researchers to access." 

Frank Kelly, SVP B2B, Lightspeed Research

These new targeting choices are available starting today. Hear more from our product team in this video:

To learn more about the new country options, see our help center article.

Happy surveying!

Posted by Michael Cumberbatch, Product Manager, Google Surveys team

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Whether you’re a small business with a single site or a large enterprise with many complex sites and apps, Google Tag Manager makes it easier to implement and maintain the tags for all your marketing and measurement tools.

Over the past few years, we've continued to improve the core functionality of Tag Manager for all users while also introducing enterprise features for customers with more advanced needs.

For Tag Manager 360 customers, we recently added Approvals functionality, enabling enterprise users to involve more stakeholders in the tagging process without needing to give them full Publish access.

Submit Changes screen in Tag Manager 360 showing how users with Edit access can request approval.

Using Approvals, you can limit select users to requesting approval for tagging changes. Then you can use the built-in commenting capability to work back and forth with them to get things just right.

Today we’re excited to announce another new feature that gives you even more control over your tagging: Zones for Tag Manager 360!

With Zones, you can give users access to publish certain types of tags on certain parts of your site. Zones work by letting you link additional containers within specified page boundaries.

Zone configuration screen in Tag Manager 360 highlighting the steps of linking containers, defining zone boundaries, and optionally turning on type restrictions.

When a page loads within the zone boundaries, any containers linked within the zone will load alongside your main container. For example, you could give your marketing team and agencies Publish access to their own containers, but limit them to only your marketing pages. This gives them the flexibility to manage their tagging independently and reduces work for admins and developers.

For even more control, you can turn on Type Restrictions to choose what types of tags, triggers, and variables will work from containers within a zone.

Type Restrictions for a Zone in Tag Manager 360 highlighting how individual tag types can be allowed or restricted.

So, whether you’re making a few quick updates to who can publish which tags or building a comprehensive tagging plan for a network of global, regional, and local websites, Zones gives you more power and flexibility to set up the right tagging workflows for your organization.

If you’re already a Tag Manager 360 customer, you’ll see a new Zones section in the left sidebar of your containers starting today. Visit our help center to learn more about Zones.

Want to become a Tag Manager 360 customer? If you’re already a customer of another Google Analytics 360 Suite product, you can reach out to your Account Manager. If you’re brand new to the Analytics 360 Suite, visit our website to learn more.

Posted by Scott Herman, Product Manager, Google Tag Manager

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Today, we are introducing a new course in Analytics Academy: Getting Started With Google Analytics 360.

Krista Seiden and Ashish Vij Introduce Getting Started With Google Analytics 360 (Video)

In this course, you will join instructors Ashish Vij and Krista Seiden as you learn key Google Analytics 360 features such as Roll-Up Reporting, Custom Funnels, Unsampled Reports, and Custom Tables. You'll gain insight into how you can benefit from reporting with BigQuery and native integrations with DoubleClick products, and we will provide you with real-world examples to illustrate how you can leverage Analytics 360’s features and integrations to drive performance and achieve your business goals.

By participating in the course, you’ll learn how to:

• Set up Roll-Up Reporting
• Analyze customer journeys with Custom Funnels
• Leverage Unsampled Reports and Custom Tables
• Analyze big data with BigQuery Export
• Evaluate marketing performance with DoubleClick reporting integrations

Sign up for Getting Started With Google Analytics 360 now and start learning today.

Happy analyzing!

Posted by Helen Huang & The Google Analytics Education Team

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With Google Optimize, we want to empower any sized business – big or small – to take steps to make their sites better. Since releasing Optimize last year, we’ve been able to help many businesses identify and provide better site experiences experiences to their users – for free. Today, we’re pleased to announce two new initiatives that will help businesses take even bigger steps when improving their sites.

Higher experiment limit 

Many of our users have given us the feedback that the current limit of 3 simultaneous running experiments is too low. This limit forces them to make difficult tradeoffs about which tests and customer segments should be prioritized. To help address this, we will soon be increasing this limit to 5 experiments. We believe this will give you more opportunity to use Optimize across your entire site.

New “Getting started with Google Optimize” video series 

For many, running website tests may appear to be a daunting task. To make things easier, for anyone completely new to testing or recently started using Optimize, we’ve created a “Getting started with Google Optimize” video series. This will help you start testing in no time. Plus, you can watch the entire series in less than 15 minutes!

Optimize Overview: Quick primer on what Optimize is and how it can help you

Set up your account: Shows you how to link to Google Analytics and get your site ready to run tests 

Create your first experiment: Use the Optimize editor to change your site without writing any code 

Understanding your results: See how Optimize clearly tells you which changes worked best

Once you’re done watching the video series, be sure to create an Optimize account, if you don’t already have one.

We hope you like these changes. Stay tuned, because there are more improvements coming!


Posted by Rotimi Iziduh, Product Manager, Google Optimize