Google Social Analytics - an in-depth review
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Google Analytics Blog summary
Our review of Google’s new Social Analytics features
Avinash Kaushik, now Google’s Digital Marketing Evangelist announced this new Google Analytics feature at his keynote at SES New York in March 2012, showing this is a major update that Google want to promote.
August 2012 update
At the time it was part of a beta referred to as "Social Analytics", but it is is now available to all Google Analytics users and as is shown in grab of the menu on the right it's
The majority of the reviews of Social Analytics so far have simply included the screengrabs available from the Google Analytics blog summary, so I thought I would go into a bit more depth and give my view on what’s helpful and what’s not so…
Google Analytics have rolled out their latest change to the tool's user interface. This post explains 8 of the changes they've made, along with screengrabs comparing old vs new.
If you've used Google Analytics for any length of time, you'll know that these updates usually take one of 3 forms:
A large series of user interface tweaks, all at once.
Introduction of individual (or small groups of) functionality changes.
Both together.
This time the change is largely user interface tweaks, though there is also a couple of neat little functionality changes.
Change 1: Left Navigation
The left navigation (the main way of accessing all reports in Google Analytics) has been updated. All of the categories within this are the same, but the layout is a little cleaner, and they've added icons here:
This is purely a visual thing, and there is no recategorisation of reports within this area. 'Advertising' still…
Value: [rating=5]
Recommended link: Raven GA Config Tool
Our review of the tool
We’ve said many times that Google Analytics is a great tool “out-of-the-box” when you first setup the tags on your site. However, to really get the most from it, it needs a lot of configuration to tailor it for your business as we describe for the new version of Google Analytics in our online training course and Ebook showing 7 Steps to get more from Google Analytics.
I’ve recently discovered this free tool from Raven Tools that I wanted to tell you about since it's a nice tool to help with configuration. It makes some aspects of this an easier process since it steps you through what’s involved for a number of key setup areas of…
A reminder of the latest changes to Google Analytics for non-specialists
This update page is intended to help anyone who uses Google Analytics, but not day-in day-out! It's also a reminder for me when giving training courses to highlight what's new.
I subscribe to the Google Analytics Blog feed to keep up-to-date and other related ones like Webmaster Tools. There are quite a few detailed posts from Google about Analytics that won't make so much difference to most users and are more for interest of GA specialists working on it all the time.
So in this summary we alert you to what we see as the major changes that every marketer using Google Analytics to review their digital marketing needs to know about - there's been a lot of them in 2011. Many thanks to the analysts like Dan Barker, Helen Birch and Tim Leighton Boyce who have written tutorials on how…
A reminder of the latest changes to Google Analytics for non-specialists
This update page is intended to help anyone who uses Google Analytics, but not day-in day-out! It's also a reminder for me when giving training courses to highlight what's new.
I subscribe to the Google Analytics Blog feed to keep up-to-date and other related ones like Webmaster Tools. There are quite a few detailed posts from Google about Analytics that won't make so much difference to most users and are more for interest of GA specialists working on it all the time.
So in this summary we alert you to what we see as the major changes that every marketer using Google Analytics to review their digital marketing needs to know about - there's been a lot of them in 2011. Many thanks to the analysts like Dan Barker, Helen Birch and Tim Leighton Boyce who have written tutorials on how…
Our summary of the implications
Importance: [rating=5] (if you’re a large company who can afford the new system)
Recommended link: Google Announcement - 29/09/2011
What you need to know about Google Analytics Premium and implications for the free version
1. The new system is available now following a private beta in UK, US and Canada.
2. It will cost $150,000 per year according to this post although Google have said “contact us for pricing”.
3. The free version will continue to be available to all users with all the current features including the new Multichannel funnels and Real-time reporting, the latter also announced at the same time.
4. Google Analytics Premium provides these 3 large company features demanded by companies according to Brian Clifton’s introduction to the premium service on Econsultancy
Data ownership clarification
Long data retention time
A formal SLA agreement
It will also…
We recommend these slide decks whether you're a beginner or more advanced user of Google Analytics
Value: [rating=5]
Google Analytics Training 301
View more presentations from ivantage.
Our commentary: I was recently asking Matt Trimmer of iVantage who runs regular Google-sponsored Seminars for Success which are Google Analytics training courses a technical question about Google Analytics for a situation I hadn't seen before. In this answer he referred me to this slide deck he has shared from Seminars Success he runs for Google. Wow! I thought that could be helpful for all sorts of levels of folks using Google Analytics. So I asked him whether I could share it…
Mining search keyphrases, entry pages and top content for nuggets of insight
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary: In this post I share a quick tip that often crops up on Google Analytics courses. It is relevant mainly to larger sites with multiple products, but even smaller sites with limited products can benefit from this analysis.
The problem
Google Analytics limits the display and export of search keywords, landing pages and entrance landing pages to 500 within its reports.
While the 500 limit will still certainly give you insights on the most important keyphrases and pages, you are still missing an opportunity.
The opportunity
If you do export more than 500 rows of data, these are just two of the options available to you:
1. Complete long tail keyphrase SEO gap analysis to review number of keyphrases that are exact matches or "contain" a target keyword.
2. Review entry pages with advanced Segment natural search applied to…
A how-to guide for setting up goals in Google Analytics
In another post, I've written about how to set high-level goals for digital marketing, this post shows how best to set them up within Google Analytics.
What is a goal in Google Analytics?
A goal is a record of a page you specify being viewed which shows that a visitor has engaged with your website showing interest in your products and services. Since you can group goals in Google Analytics, I recommend you group in a logical way. This example shows one suggestion for a grouping.
Which goals should I use?
Different types of goals include to think about including are:
1. Leads from signup such as a whitepaper download or contacts us
2. Site engagement goals which show time on site, these are most useful for a publisher, but
3. Top of funnel product…
5 tips showing how to Google Analytics to review your marketing campaign performance better
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary: I wrote a guest blog post on the dotDigitalBlog this week which has been quite popular, so I thought I would alert you to it here.
Marketing implications: My post covers 5 techniques or measures which are opportunities I find are often missed when training marketers, so I hoped to make people aware of them.
Recommended link: 5 tips on using Google Analtyics to review marketing performance…
