Author Archive

Both can be hugely informative and useful for any marketer. In this video, after typically making sure Nick, our Google Analytics Developer Relations Manager, is on his toes, Avinash, the Analytics Evangelist here at Google, gives real world use cases from his own experience using each of these products.

Ah, Burlington, Vermont in late summer....can you do any better? The summer is winding down and the last quarter of the year is still a ways away and easily prepared for. All of France is on vacation. :-) The weather is just right on Lake Champlain. There's some time to get energized for the holiday season. It's a good chance to take a break, roll up your sleeves, learn some new skills and do some networking. And if online marketing and analysis is your field, there's no better time and place than Burlington this August to do it.

Join Google Seminar for Success leaders in Burlington from August 11 - 14 for an enriching and fun few days at their Seminars For Success Summit '09. Epikone, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, hosts this summit every year, and we've never heard a bad word about it. This year should be the best yet. Here's what to expect:

• Industry leaders from Google Analytics Authorized Consultants EpikOne and WebShare, AdWords Seminar Leader Anastasia Holdren, Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik and others will cover in-depth training on Google's online marketing suite and dive into strategic insights at the thought leadership day.
• Daily workshops will cover all aspects of Google AdWords, Google Analytics and Website Optimizer along with special sessions on social marketing, mobile strategies and more.
• Plus each night you'll experience the best Vermont has to offer while socializing with peers, including brewery tours, lake cruises, shopping, sightseeing and more.

Did we mention brewery tours? Burlington was voted one of the best small cities in which to do business by "Inc. Magazine" and offers tons of outdoor activities for families. It'll be fun, but don't get us wrong - you will come away from this Summit with increased expertise and contacts that will do nothing but benefit you and your business.

From time to time you might see a "not set" entry in your Top Content or Keywords reports. Hopefully at this point you go to the Google Analytics Help Center to do a search for "not set" to find the definition. :) If you don't, not to worry - this blog post sums up why this entry appears in your report and what you can do to prevent it from happening in the future.

"not set"
Any direct visit or referral visit will be shown under "not set" because it does not have a keyword, ad content, or any other campaign information associated with the visit. The explanations below can help you figure out why a campaign attribute wasn't collected along with the visit.

Re-tagging your AdWords destination URLs
If you are seeing a significant amount of "not set" or '(not set)' entries in your AdWords-related reports, you may wish to disable auto-tagging and instead use the URL Builder to tag your destination URLs so that they're set to the specific campaign variables you want to appear in your reports.

gclid redirection for keywords
Sometimes Analytics users are master URL taggers and still see a "not set" keyword entry. Usually this happens when there is some kind of redirection and the gclid (which is the magic that makes autotagging happen) doesn't work the way it's supposed to. At this point, we recommend you do some detective work going backwards from what you know. Start by clicking on the "not set" entry, and from the Dimension menu, select 'Source' and then 'Medium.' You can also select 'Landing Page' in the Dimension menu if 'Source' or 'Medium' doesn't give you any clues about the missing keyword. These segmenting options should help you narrow down the source of this keyword so that you can pinpoint which keyword's gclid isn't behaving properly.

For more information, search the Google Analytics Help Center (it's important to include the quotation marks!) by entering "not set" in the search box. If you know of any other tips or tricks about "not set" entries, please feel free to post a comment.


Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

The Search Engine Strategies San Jose conference is next week! This conference has become probably the most well-attended conference for anything related to doing business on the web. You'll see everything - booths representing cutting edge, fledgling technologies as well as the traditional online companies - and everyone, from experts in almost every facet of the web, to analysts, media and bloggers, to ad execs.

There's a ton of great sessions to attend and networking to be done, and a bunch of Googlers will be there including many of us on the Google Analytics team. We'll also have a booth where we will be demoing and answering your questions, along with Google Website Optimizer, AdWords, AdSense, Webmaster Tools, YouTube, and Doubleclick. You can register now and save 20% with the code SJ20SES.

Here are some sessions that might be of interest for you, oh ye of the analytical leanings:

Monday, August 10th, 2009
All day Web Analytics Association Base Camp - training on ways to optimize your website and what tools to use.

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
10:00-11:30 - Always Be Testing - Bryan Eisenberg
11:45-12:45 - Creating a Web Analytics Culture - Feras Alhlou
1:45-2:45 - How to Turn Your Web Analytics into a Money Making Machine - Avinash Kaushik, Bryan Eisenberg, Jim Sterne

Many of our clients use Excel to manage their ad campaigns, visualize marketing performance, and perform complex data analysis. Most analysts use the Google Analytics Export feature to manually export their report data to CSV files. Then they import the CSV file into Excel. No longer! Now, with the Google Analytics API you can bypass this manual step and export Google Analytics data directly from within Excel! Once you've set it up, there's no need to visit the Analytics reports to view data in Excel.

Thanks to a variety of developers, here are four solutions that can transform you from a reporting monkey to an analysis ninja (as Avinash would say).

• VBA Macros - The simplest solution of them all. Mikael Thuneberg's page explains how to make API requests directly from Excel using VBA Scripts and includes a pre-built Excel worksheet to get you started.
  
  
• The Tatvic Excel Plugin - Another easy-to-use plugin for Windows users that supports both Excel 2003 and Excel 2007. To get started you download the plugin then register to use the tool. Its simple UI helps you build complex queries and get data from Analytics right into your Excel worksheet.
  
  
  Tatvic's Plugin Query Builder
  
  
• Excellent Analytics - Is an open-source initiative by Mark Red and Dropit. This Excel 2007 plugin works on Vista/XP and comes with a query builder to help you create Google Analytics queries and pull data right into Excel. Webanalytics.info put together a great step by step tutorial to get started using this plugin.
  
  
  Excellent Analytic's Query Builder Interface
  
  
• ShufflePoint - Works somewhat differently than the solutions above. ShufflePoint has developed a query language that works with the Google Analytics API to achieve common tasks, such as defining the last 30 days as a date range. One then uses this language to construct an Analytics Data Export API query either by navigating to a URL within Excel, or by using their web-based query builder, then importing this data into Excel. This process allows the ShufflePoint solution to work across most versions of Excel, as well as Powerpoint, and iGoogle gadgets.
  
  
  Shufflepoint's Web Based Query Builder
  

We continue to be impressed by the new solutions developers are bringing to market by leveraging the Google Analytics Platform. If you have developed a useful new tool or integration on top of Google Analytics, drop us an email at analytics-api@google.com. If it's innovative and useful we'll highlight it to our readers on this blog.


Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

The YouTube blog post is fascinating reading, showing screenshots of the different variables on the homepage that were tested. And for those of you working on high traffic, enterprise-level sites, you know that making small, proven improvements - thereby moving the needle by small percentages - can mean huge wins for your bottom line. It's a must-read showing the practicality of multivariate testing.

It’s been a while since we’ve updated you on the phenomenal growth of our Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (GAAC) network. Over the last year, we are delighted to have added the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Romania, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Poland, India and Russia to the countries serviced "in-house" (by local companies) via the GAAC network. Their local business experience and of course their ability to speak the language are hugely important to helping their customers successfully deploy Google's analytics-related products.

Working with Google's worldwide network of Authorized Consultants is one of the most cost-effective investments you can make as an online business. Our "AC" partners are carefully vetted by our partner team and meet rigorous qualification standards, whether you need assistance with Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, or Urchin Software. Each offers a range of services including most or all of the following:

• Technical implementation
• Configuration/customization
• Consultation/optimization
• Training & seminars
• Paid support with SLAs

Our global network now offers Authorized Consultants in these regions:

• North America: USA, Canada, Mexico
• South America: Argentina, Brazil
• Europe: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK
• Middle East & Africa: Israel, South Africa
• Asia Pacific: Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Sri Lanka

Contact one of our partners at http://www.google.com/analytics/authorized_consultants.html

If you're ready to try your hand and using the Data Export API, we've created some new guides to help you get started quickly and easily.

First, for the JavaScript library, here's our new super-simple getting started guide. It leads you through creating a sample application step-by-step. With this guide, you can have a working HTML page that pulls in your Analytics data in minutes (really)! Once you're done, you'll be familiar with all the key elements you need to create a basic application. The guide also shows you where to go next, since you'll be poised to customize your app.

In addition, we also have a new Authentication Guide. Authentication is one of the more difficult aspects of getting started with Google Data, and for the JavaScript and Java guides, much of the authorization complexity is handled by library methods. For that reason, we've pulled the auth stuff out of all the language guides and put it in one central doc, with relevant samples beneath each authentication methodology. We hope this makes it easier for you to:

A. Get started quickly without being confused by authentication.
B. Have a source of authentication details when you are ready.
C. Understand which authentication method to use and when.

We'd love to hear your feedback on these guides through our Developer Group. Stay tuned for a similar guide for the Java client library.

Posted by Patricia Boswell, Google Analytics Team