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Well, SES San Jose 2006 is over, and we had a great time meeting all of you who stopped by the Google Analytics booth and attended the GoogleDance. Yesterday, there was a panel called Vendor Chat OnMeasuring Success which included our own Brett Crosby, SeniorProduct Marketing Manager for Google Analytics and co founder ofUrchin. Each of the vendors on the panel were asked to discuss thevarious approaches to measuring a website s success fromconversions to ROI, from customer inclusion to the idea of persuasion in a discussion of marketing success.Before the Q A period, each panelist had five minutes to identifythe most important issue in web analytics. According to Brett, Themost important thing about web analytics is something our productdoesn t do. And none of the other products do it either. What is that crucial thing? It s analyzing and then taking action onyour web analytics data. Knowing how to do that makes all thedifference. To properly monitor and analyze your data, Brett suggesteddoing one of three things or some combination of them : analyzeand act on the data yourself; hire a professional services firm; orhire an in house analyst.Regardless of which you choose, you have incredible flexibility withGoogle Analytics. If you hire an in house analyst or if you analyzethe data yourself, you ve got many resources including this blog, theConversion University, the Help Center, built in product Help,and the Google Group. For those who want to hire a professionalservices firm, we ve got a world class international network of Google Analytics Authorized Consultants.We really enjoyed meeting you and look forward to connecting witheven more people using Analytics in the future. Please let us know ifthere s anything else you d like to see from support or marketing oreven from this blog by shooting us an email.Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics

I m happy to tell you that we ve just removed the wait to receive a Google Analytics account. Now anyone with a website can instantly create one for free by simply by visiting google.com analytics or by clicking on the Analytics tab within AdWords. After you create an account, we suggest reading the Installation Guide to get it set up quickly and correctly.When we founded Urchin we actually had an ad based business model where we were able to give the product away for free. It didn t last and we eventually went with a paid model. But when our company was acquired in April 2005 we worked with Google to determine a way to give it away for free again, this time with no ads. By doing this, we re able to give all websites large and small the tools you need to better serve your customers, make more money, and improve the web experience for everyone.Regardless of how you use Google Analytics, what s important to me is that you re using it at all. In other words, the more you take action based on web analytics data, the better the Internet becomes. That s the underlying philosophy our team shares.Finally, this represents a very large effort by our engineers and many others at Google, so I d like to thank them publicly.On behalf of everyone on our team, thank you for your ongoing commitment, enthusiasm and hard work.Posted by Brett Crosby, Sr. Manager, Google Analytics

You ve signed up for Google Analytics. And, you have an AdWords account. So why not link your AdWords account to your new Google Analytics account to get the most out of both services? If you already use AdWords to drive traffic, Google Analytics is the perfect instrument panel. ROI, Revenue per Click, and conversion rates correlated by search result position all right in front of you. Plus there are a few reports that have been created specifically for AdWords users: the AdWords Analysis report and the AdWords Keyword Positions report.When you link your accounts, everything is done for you: Analytics will automatically tag your AdWords links so you can see detailed campaign tracking data, and Analytics will begin importing cost data from your AdWords campaigns for ROI calculations. By simply linking the two accounts, you ll be able to easily identify which campaigns and keywords are working and which aren t.Here s how you do it. First, make sure that you have used the same Google Account for both your Analytics and AdWords accounts. If not, don t worry just add your AdWords username to your Analytics account as an Account Admin.Then just follow these 5 steps:1. Log in to your AdWords account at https: adwords.google.com2. Click the Analytics tab3. In the Steps to get Google Analytics box, click I already have a Google Analytics account at the bottom of the page 4. From the Existing Google Analytics Account drop down list, select your Analytics account number5. Click Link Account That s it! Your two accounts are now linked. If you want to learn more about using AdWords with Google Analytics, you might find this article from Conversion University helpful: Optimizing your AdWords ROI with Google Analytics.Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Many people use Google Analytics to improve their online marketing campaigns and keyword buying, but Google Analytics also offers powerful ways to identify visitor navigation trends on your site. Without the right data, optimizing a website is no easy feat. For beginners to the web analytics world, though, all the data provided around content optimization can be a bit daunting so here are four steps to help you optimize your site using the data available in Google Analytics: 1. Create a funnel path and goal that mimics the expected navigationYou designed your site, so you know how you expect your users to navigate through it. Create a funnel and goal that mimics the expected path that your site is designed for. Note: if your site is not using the e commerce tracking code, give your goal a value and take a look at this post about setting goals on a non e commerce site. 2. Give it a few daysGive your site a little while to perform, and let Analytics collect at least 3 or 4 weeks of data. Weekends, special events, and holidays may lead to skewed results so giving your site some time to perform enables you to get more reliable, indicative metrics. 3. Pull up a few key reports and re evaluate your funnelsOpen up your Analytics account and visit Content Optimization Content Performance Top Content report. Sort the list of pages by the Index column. The Index value tells you how much each page on your site is worth as opposed to how much each site visit is worth. The Index is based on how often a transaction is completed or goal is reached when a specific page is also accessed during a visit. The Index will give a value to that page calculated based on the value of the goal reached. Use this metric to evaluate the pages in the report. Remember, this column won t be populated with data unless you have a goal, and that goal has a value see step 1 . When you sort by Index, ask yourself what are the pages at the top of that column? Are they in your funnel process? If not, why are they worth more than pages in your funnel? Also, review the exit paths in Content Optimization Goals Funnel Process Defined Funnel Navigation. Where are these visitors going? Do these pages have a high Index value? If so, you may want to reconsider the navigation path that you ve set up, or maybe there are some design flaws that are making the certain pages difficult to navigate through. 4. Optimize that site!Armed with this information, your next task is to make some changes. Burn the midnight oil and redesign your site. Then continue using Analytics to evaluate your site changes, because keeping visitors and turning them into customers or goal converters should always drive your site changes.Posted by Alex Ortiz, Google Analytics Team

Besides telling you from which sources your site traffic originates, Google Analytics also tracks just about any activity that occurs on your site, including popular navigation paths, plus track downloads, outbound links, and activities on cross domain properties. But one shortcoming is the lack of reporting on 404 pages, which appear when there s no file or page that corresponds to the visitor s request. For example, sometimes visitors will type in a filename that they think is available on your site, or sometimes your site might have a obsolete link which routes to a deleted or non existent file or directory. In both cases, a 404 or Not Found error page will appear on the browser.It s valuable to see these requests so you can learn what visitors are looking for, and consider adding new content or fixing the broken link.Reporting on missing or error pages requires a few steps:1. Add the Google Analytics tracking code to a custom 404 error page2. Modify the tracking code on the 404 page as follows see the urchinTracker modification in red below : lt;script type text javascript src http: www.google analytics.com urchin.js gt; lt; script gt; lt;script type text javascript gt; uacct xxxxx x ;urchinTracker 404.html?page udl.pathname udl.search ; lt; script gt;This code sends a virtual pageview of 404.html?page pagename.html?queryparameter to your account, where pagename.html?queryparameters is the missing page name.3. Look for 404.html in your Top Content report. Or to make it easier open the Dynamic Content report and expand the list for 404.html. Posted by Alex Ortiz, Google Analytics Team

One of the nice things about Google Analytics is how easy it is to see ROI for each of the keywords you buy on AdWords. But what do those ROI numbers in your reports really mean?ROI is Revenue Cost Cost, expressed as a percentage. Revenue is taken from either the value you set as your goal value s , or from e commerce revenue values if you have set up e commerce tracking. Cost is currently only derived from your AdWords CPC cost per click values imported from your AdWords account when you link your Analytics and AdWords accounts with auto tagging turned on.An ROI of 0 means that you earned in revenue the same amount of money you spent. An ROI of 100 means that you spent, say, 5, and made 10. In other words, you spent X and received 2X in revenue. A minus sign 100 indicates that you lost all of the money you spent. If your numbers are all 100 , it s probably because you haven t configured e commerce or defined values for your goals and therefore Google Analytics isn t registering any revenue. It s not uncommon to get an ROI percentage of several hundred or even several thousand. These kinds of ROIs simply indicate that your Revenue is many times greater than your Cost. Depending upon your business, you might need an ROI of 1000 just to break even. Let s say that you sell golf clubs online for 500 per set. You spend 100 on the keyword beginner golf clubs , which results in 5 sales for a total of 2,500.In this case, the AdWords Analysis Report will show that you ve made a 2,400 ROI. But you need to factor in your operating expenses and your production costs to understand how much money you ve actually made. For example, if your cost of purchasing or manufacturing the clubs is 350, you ve really only made 150 per set x 5 750. That gives you an ROI of 750 100 100 650 .It s best to use ROI as a guide to your keyword spending instead of as the final answer on how much you ve made. Those of you who want to learn more about keyword buying metrics might be interested in this post: what s a visit worth?.Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Another barely detectable profile pun in a post title? That must mean we ve increased the default number of profiles in your account again. We recently announced that we increased it from 5 to 10. Today, we re announcing that the default number of profiles in all accounts has increased from 10 to 50.We ll continue to add benefits like this for existing users and there are more and more of you every day.Here is a help center article that explains what profiles are and offers ideas on what to do with these additional profiles, such as track more of your sites or use filters on a duplicate profile to customize the report data that you see. Also, the Managing Profiles section of the Google Analytics Help Center contains more information about creating and using your profiles.Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Do you use both Google Analytics and Google AdSense? If so, we d like to get your feedback on two questions: Which Google Analytics reports do you use most often in conjunction with your AdSense account? And which reports or metrics would you most like to see added to Google Analytics to help you succeed with AdSense?Tell us your opinions in the Google Group Analytics Help which is a forum for Google Analytics users. We ve created a topic thread to specifically hear this feedback.Not an AdSense user yet? Sign up here.Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

There are some pretty fantastic resources on the web for people who use Google Analytics, and those interested in learning more. We want to mention a few blogs on web analytics generally and on Google Analytics that we ve been reading. We highly recommend these to all of you who use data to back up your online decisions. ROI Revolution Blog ROI Revolution is a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant GAAC . This frequently updated blog contains interviews with web analytics experts, as well as Google Analytics tips and in depth explanations of reports with screenshots. Great reading. Take a look at these two recent posts: Start at the Beginning: Making Sense of the Google Analytics Toolbox by Meredith Smith Understanding Google Analytics Data Over Time Report by Michael Harrison GA Experts Blog A European GAAC affiliated with Omega Digital Media and a very informative Google Analytics focused blog addressing practical questions and offering some pretty ingenious solutions. Learn about a new filter called Override Bid Term Filter that will show you the actual search keywords that brought a visitor to your site, not just the keyword that you bid on in your PPC account, in the recent post How to Get Detailed PPC Keyword Data from Google Analytics This Just InWritten by Justin Cutroni who works at EpikOne, a one stop, do it all GAAC on the east coast, which has its own informative blog. Justin posts helpful, troubleshooting articles that help clarify Google Analytics and make it even more understandable, useful, and accessible. Check out Justin s recent posts:Google Analytics: How to Tell When Something is WrongGoogle Analytics Configuration Mistake 3: Third Party Domains Occam s RazorWritten by Avinash Kaushik, head of web research and analytics at Intuit, and a vocal and visible analytics practitioner, advocate, and thought leader. Every web analyst, marketer, webmaster, IT specialist, and executive should read his recent post: Seven Steps to Creating a Data Driven Decision Making CulturePosted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

A few people at the Emetrics Summit told us they d like to learn more tips and tricks for implementing Google Analytics. So in the next few weeks we will begin including tips straight from various members of the Google Analytics team. And we ll kick it off with a tip for bloggers, though anyone can use it. One of the most important things for a blogger to know is how people find his or her blog. Links and referrals are an integral part of blogging culture. Many blogs display a finite number of links to a post. Of course, you can see referring links aggregated and displayed in your Google Analytics reports, within your Marketing Optimization Visitor Segment Performance Referring Source report. Unfortunately, the Referring Source report shows only the referring domain. You can t see what comes after the domain the rest of the referring link to see the exact page on the site that contained the link to your blog. There is a way to see this data however: by cross segmenting a referring source by Content. Here are the steps to follow: In the Marketing Optimization Visitor Segment Performance Referring Source report, click on the red button containing two up arrows, located to the left of any referring source in the data table. You will see the Analysis Options table. Choose Cross Segment Performance and then you will see a drop down menu. Choose to cross segment the entry by Content. This will take you to a new data table that shows you the rest of the referring URL not including any dynamic query parameters anything after a question mark, for instance . Here s what you ll see: Here are some other ways you can use Google Analytics to monitor your blog: find out what posts readers liked the most by looking at daily visits and popularity of permalinks. Knowing this can influence what you write about. see if you re keeping your readers by comparing new vs. returning visitors find out how people exit your blog, as well as measure subscriptions to your feed using UrchinTracker on your links see how long readers spend looking at your content by looking at average length of visits monitor visitor activity after you make a post to see when daily visit levels taper off. That means it s time to post again. Feel free to share your best practices for bloggers in the Analytics Forum.Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team