Author Archive

We are pleased to welcome you to the official Google Analytics blog. Now you can stay up to date on the latest info posted by the Google Analytics team. You ll learn about product changes as we make them, whether it s a new feature you ve asked for, or a fix for something that needed fixing. We ll let you know when we add new reports see below and will ask for your feedback too. And we ll frequently post tips and best practices, as well as spotlight helpful resources such as Conversion University and the Google Analytics Help Center.Expect to see posts from a variety of people on our team. Sometimes they ll be informal and brief; others will be more structured. We hope you ll find all of them useful.And now for our first product update which you may have already noticed : there is a new report in Google Analytics called AdWords Analysis. You can see it within your Analytics reports now located in Marketing Optimization Search Engine Marketing .The AdWords Analysis report was released two weeks ago and shows you the ROI for every Campaign, Ad Group, and keyword in your AdWords account. You may find it useful as you monitor and optimize your Ad Groups and keywords. In order to get the full benefit of this report, you ll need to link your AdWords account with your Analytics account and have auto tagging turned on.Enjoy, and subscribe to the feed, or visit often to learn about updates like this within hours of their creation.Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

You may have noticed that we make changes to Google Analytics from time to time. We call them improvements and we hope you agree. Since we ve just started posting to this blog, we d like to catch you up on a few of the improvements we ve made recently. By the way, you can also learn about new features and other changes through a link at the bottom right of your account s Analytics Settings page when you log into Google Analytics. The link is called What s new with Google Analytics. It s a brief and frequently updated Help Center page listing recent changes.So what s new? We ve added support for Safari browsers. We ve re enabled the Site Overlay report to work more reliably on sites with dynamic content. And to make it easier for you to see data about your dynamic pages, we ve replaced the Page Query Terms report with the new Dynamic Content report, and added query terms to the Top Content report. We ve made it possible to assign the order in which filters should be applied via the Assign Filter Order link on your Profile Settings page . And you can now edit your time zone and rename your accounts.Last but definitely not least, we re sending out more invitations all the time. We won t stop until every advertiser, publisher, and website owner on the planet has access to sophisticated, actionable, and free web analytics.Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

What is the average value of a visit from a certain website worth to you? Can you, for instance, measure the average value of a visit to your site from someone who clicks on your AdWords ad as compared to someone who gets to your website by typing your URL directly into their browser? See google cpc versus direct none in the image below click to enlarge. The answer can be found in the sometimes overlooked Visits column found in the Google Analytics conversion reports, including Campaign Conversion, Source Conversion, Overall Keyword Conversion and CPC vs Organic Conversion. In fact, because this metric is found in so many reports, you can compare per visit values for organic search referrals, paid keywords, CPC campaigns and almost anything else you can think of. It s a great comparison metric that can help you shift your marketing budget to high performing traffic sources and keywords.To calculate Visits, Google Analytics adds and averages the total revenue from your conversions. This revenue might be from e commerce sales or from static values that you assign to non ecommerce goals. Thus, as with any endeavor, goals and goal values are necessary. You ll need to set them up in order to see metrics such as Visits as well as ROI and RPC Revenue per Click , which you ll find indispensable for optimizing your keyword buys.To learn how to set up goals, take a look at the Help Center article How do I set up goals? Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Yesterday we added another report tailored specifically to AdWords users. The new report called AdWords Keyword Positions displays search position correlated with visits and conversions for each of your keywords. Drill down on any keyword to see its display position. Positions T1 through T3 indicate that your ad was promoted to the top of the search results page. Positions 1 through 8 indicate placement or location in the right hand column of ads with 1 being the top position. 9 through 16 indicate the same on the second page of ads and so on. Here s an example of the position distribution of clicks on ads for searches on the keyword Google Pen in our account:AdWords Keywords Positions is useful for advertisers in determining the value of your keywords and bid amounts in relation to your ad s actual position or rank on Google search results pages. This report can be used in conjunction with the Position Preference feature in AdWords to optimize around ad position in the following way: the AdWords Keyword Positions report in Google Analytics shows conversion rates and CTR for a keyword s results position and then, with Position Preference in AdWords, you can select that position as a target. We hope you find this level of integration between AdWords and Analytics to be useful.You ll see data in this new report if:Your AdWords and Analytics accounts are linkedYou ve turned on Auto tagging in your AdWords account settingsOne more thing: if you don t yet have a Google Analytics account, we ve cleared out the waiting list for invitations. Once you ve signed up within a few days you should get an email message with an invitation code.Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

We recently posted about what a visit is worth and the importance of setting goals in determining a visit s value. We often get asked, How do I come up with goal values if my site is not an e commerce site? The answer: you can probably come up with intelligent values for your own set of goals. For example, if you know that 1 out of every 100 PDF downloads on your site results in a 500 sale, you can assign a value of 5 to that download. Other examples of goals are newsletter sign ups, product sales, and visits to your contact us page.Once you have defined a value for these pages which you can set in the Goal Value field within your Goal Settings page , you can better conceptualize the value of your website and your online advertising. Then you can explain it to others with data, to back up any marketing or design choices you make. You can also measure the success of your design or marketing experiments, by observing goal values to find out what works best.To learn more, take a look at the Conversion University article Monetizing Non Ecommerce Sites. Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Have you visited Conversion University lately?It s a great place to learn search marketing and web analytics techniques. Some of our latest articles include:Sitemaps for Search Engine Optimization SEO in Driving Traffic.Have you taken every step to optimize your site for natural search? Learn five Google Sitemaps tips that can help drive traffic to your site and improve the visibility of your content.Qualitative Measurement for Brand Lift Campaigns in Tracking and Testing.Beyond conversion rates, average visit values, and ROI, it s sometimes useful to gain a qualitative impression of how well your site and marketing perform. Here are five Google Analytics reports you can use to assess how well your brand lift campaigns engage your visitors.AdWords Targeting and Tracking Tips in Driving TrafficDo you know your AdWords ROI for each of your geographic markets? Looking for the optimal mix between Search and Content network delivery? Here are five tips for targeting and tracking your ads effectively.Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

In response to the continuing strong demand for Google Analytics accounts, we ve been steadily increasing capacity and decreasing turnaround time for issuing new accounts. We re now able to offer an invitation code usually within 2 days. In fact, if you re an AdWords customer, you may not need an invitation code at all because we ve begun to streamline the signup process for Analytics from AdWords. If Google Analytics within your AdWords account hasn t already been enabled try signing up from your AdWords account by clicking on the Analytics tab , check back again soon!Posted by Brett Crosby, Google Analytics Team

In pay per click PPC advertising, understanding keyword performance is essential. But did you know that you can also use Google Analytics to see how different ad copy affects conversion rates? The cross segmentation feature click the red arrow to the left of your results enables you to see not only how a keyword performed, but also which ad copy was most effective.For example, go to the AdWords Analysis report under Marketing Optimization Search Engine Marketing. Drill down from the Campaign to the Ad Group to the Keyword by clicking on the plus sign. To cross segment a keyword by ad copy, click on the red Analysis Options button to the left of your desired keyword.Select Cross Segment Performance and then the Content option. See screenshot below. Assuming that you have enabled autotagging on your AdWords account, this will display the first line of ad text in the creative.You can also look at the overall performance of ad copy by looking in the Overall Ad A B Testing report under Content Optimization Ad Version Testing. This report actually has a column called Content that displays the first line of ad text and the visits generated by that ad.Posted by Aubrey Sabala, Google Analytics team

Are you planning on coming to the next Search Engine Strategies conference taking place in San Jose, CA from August 7 to August 10th? It s a great event for learning how to grow your business through search engine marketing and website optimization and to network with business owners, web developers, experts, and vendors. SES runs more than four days, packed with informative seminars on a wide range of topics like Ad Copy Landing Page Clinic, Search APIs, Online Video Advertising and Local Search Marketing Tactics led by well known leaders and authors in web analytics and search engine marketing. Google CEO Eric Schmidt will even be delivering the keynote on Wednesday, August 9, and on August 10, Google Analytics Senior PMM and Urchin co founder Brett Crosby will be on a panel about measuring the success of websites and online marketing generally.We re excited to offer a promotional Priority code for 20 off when you buy a Conference or day pass to SES San Jose. The Priority code is 20GOO2 two zero gee oh oh two . To redeem the Priority code and purchase a pass to the conference, go here or click the ad below:We hope to see you there!Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Tracking multiple subdomains? Want to track different parts of your site separately? Need to track more than four goals for a website? All of this is easier now, because we ve increased the default number of profiles from 5 to 10. And if you re not sure what to do with your new wealth of profiles, here are some ideas.Note: You can only link 1 AdWords account to 1 Google Analytics account, so if you have multiple AdWords accounts often for separate sites , please create a unique Google Analytics account for each AdWords account.Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics