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Over the past two weeks, some of you may have noticed (and might have even clicked on) a link to a satisfaction survey while using Google Reader. We're always interested in learning more about how you use Google Reader and what features you'd like to see next. We'll certainly be sharing what features and fixes emerged from your input in the coming weeks.

We asked all of you to describe Reader in one word and, well, here's what you said:

(Responses as of October 6th, 2008) | Word cloud created at http://wordle.net

Try clicking the image to see a zoomable version that allows you to get close and see some of the less frequent, yet often equally insightful/amusing, words you used to describe Reader (you can also turn your own images into zoomable maps here).

We were really happy to hear that the great majority of respondents thought very highly of Google Reader, but we also acknowledge that there's a lot of work to be done, as some of you described Reader as:

• Meh
• cpumemoryhog
• adequate
• clunky

Finally, we didn't know quite what to make of some of your descriptions, but enjoyed them thoroughly nonetheless:

• Wunderbar
• Cromulent
• creamy-goodness
• Pineapple

Thanks again for your helpful (and highly amusing) feedback!

Have you ever had a friend or family member who you know would love using Google Reader? Have you ever had trouble explaining to that same friend or family member just how using Reader could make their lives easier (and more fun)? We sure have, so if you're anything like us then we have some useful tools in store for you.

The Google Reader Team is proud to introduce several new help resources designed specifically at introducing beginners to using Reader: Google Reader Help Videos and the Google Reader Getting Started Guide, both accessible directly from our Help Center.

Feel free to let us know what you think by commenting on the videos or by leaving feedback in our Help Forum. Although the videos are aimed at beginners, we're hoping to eventually cover even more advanced and lesser-known features in the same visual and step-by-step manner.

Now get watching, Readers! And don't forget to send the link along to your favorite beginner, newbie, or visual learner!

About two months ago we enabled commenting on your friends' shared items. Today, we're happy to introduce some changes to how commenting works, including the ability to start sharing with any of the people who comment on your friends' shared items.

Have you ever read a comment on a friend's shared item and wondered who that person was? In the past, there hasn't been a way to interact with these people besides reading their comments on your friends' shared items. Not anymore!

By hovering over the name of an unfamiliar commenter you can see their profile picture and the links they've added to their Google Profile. Furthermore, you can click the "Start sharing" link to start sharing your shared items with that person!

This is a great way to add new people to your friends list. When that person next logs in, they'll see an option to view your shared items as well as the option to start sharing with you. If they reciprocate, you'll have a new friend in your Reader.

We've also made comments more visible and more flexible from within Reader. Now, you'll be able to see comments on shared items while viewing All items. You'll also be notified when new comments are made by the small speech bubble icon in your left sidebar, even when your Friends' shared items module is collapsed. While making comments, your options for formatting have been increased. Try using asterisks or underscores to spice up your comments with bold and italic text.

Note: You can stop sharing your items with someone at any time by visiting the Sharing settings link in your left sidebar. Also, if someone chooses to share with you, your shared items are not visible to that person unless you consent. Finally, the "start sharing" link in profile cards will also only appear to those users sharing with friends, and not those sharing only with chat buddies.

Posted by Nick Santaniello, Consumer Operations

The Google Reader team often looks to you, our users, for feedback on the changes we've implemented as well as for help determining our priorities for the future. In that spirit, we're excited to announce the launch of Product Ideas for Google Reader: a tool that allows you to submit your best ideas directly to the Google Reader team and to other Google Reader users.

Have you ever had an idea that would make Google Reader better, more efficient, or just more fun to use? Using Product Ideas, you can submit your idea as well as read suggestions from other users - and best of all, you can vote on the ideas submitted and browse the highest-ranked ideas. We'll get a chance to see and respond directly to the ideas that you, our users, are most excited about.

In addition to submitting product ideas, you can also post links to your own favorite custom bundles and Send To links as well as browse links submitted by others. Using Product Ideas, you'll easily be able to see (and subscribe to!) the highest rated bundles and Send To links as well as expose your own content to a whole new group of Reader users just like you.

Give it a try! Submit some suggestions and your favorite bundles and Send To links and, as always, let us know what you think.

This is the 9th exciting episode of Web Analytics TV with Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski, where you ask questions about web analytics via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them. We had lots of fun putting this episode and we hope you get a kick out of watching it. Here is the list of last week’s questions.

In this action-packed episode we discuss:

• How to track each referral source overtime for visitors
• How to share custom segments and reports with other people
• Getting transaction data for only one referral source
• Is there a place to share Google Analytics code snippets and regular expressions?
• Cross domain tracking when users right-click and open in a new window
• How you need to think about Page Speed and Google Analytics
• Using the comparison report with two date ranges (and hypercube space)
• Sending historical or futuristic data into Google Analytics
• Why eCommerce reports do not match an eCommerce backend system
• Tracking commas instead of decimals for revenue in eCommerce
• Tracking pigViews (just watch the video :-)
• Reporting on content consumption (like pageviews) by keywords
• Setting the visible number of rows in reports
• How to normalize keywords to replace underscore with spaces
• Best practices on upgrading to async tracking code
• Best practices to report on cities in a particular state

If you found this post helpful, we'd love to hear your comments. Or, please submit a question or vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site and Avinash and I will answer the newest batch in a couple of weeks with another video.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

Do you like web analytics data? Do you like number crunching in Excel? Get ready to drool once you click on the images below to look at them up close. But don't jump ahead just yet! A little background on a great story...

When we released the Google Analytics Data Export API, we were excited to see what developers would build - but it’s even more exhilarating to see developers profiting from all their hard work. One developer, Mikael Thuneberg, has succeeded in doing just that, by starting a new business consulting around our API called AutomateAnalytics.com.

Mikael started working with the API in June 2009, developing a set of VBA functions to import data into Excel (VBA is Excel's built-in scripting language). His free solution has many benefits:

• It does not require installing plug-ins
  
• Reports are simple to share with others
  
• The functions can be used just like any of Excel's built-in functions like SUM or COUNT

Check out the getting started guide to learn how to use this free tool to generate the jaw-dropping reports below - click images to enlarge:

Click images for larger versions

Because the solution is free and easy to use, Mikael quickly got requests from companies to build custom reports. As he discusses, ”All of these customers have excellent skills for analyzing data, but have asked for help in automating time-consuming manual work, like data retrieval and building custom visualizations.”

One of these came from Sanoma Games, the online gaming unit of Sanoma Group, one of the largest media companies in Europe. Sanoma owns dozens of popular sites, and so it was taking huge amounts of time for their analytics team to keep track of KPIs, let alone gather data for in-depth analysis.

Mikael built an Excel tool for them that fetches and processes the data they need in a matter of seconds. Now Sanoma's analysts can spend their time analyzing and taking action, instead of manually copying the data from one place to another.

Mikael eventually got many requests for customized reports from leading Internet companies, which led him to create AutomateAnalytics. As Mikael says, “I’ve always wanted to run a business. What I thought would be a fun project led into an amazing business opportunity. The Google Analytics API really helped me realize this goal.”

We’re really impressed with what Mikael has done and thrilled to share his story!

It’s the 10th Anniversary of Web Analytics TV! Happy Birthday to us!

In this exciting series, with Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski, you ask and vote on your favorite web analytics questions via our Google Moderator site for Web Analytics TV and we answer them.

Here is the list of last week’s questions.

In this action packed episode we discuss:

• Tracking un-subscriptions with negative values
• Best practices tracking social media
• Sources of keywords outside of Paid Search to help site optimization
• Custom reports sorted by date
• Tracking form validation with Google Analytics
• Why Exit Rate is 0% in the Google Analytics navigation summary report
• Tips to avoid sampling on landing pages
• Configuring Google Analytics to track test and production environments
• Comparing Google Analytics and Webmaster tools
• Best practices for tracking PDF downloads
• Getting the full referring URL in Google Analytics
• Sharing custom reports with advanced segments
• Best way to find keywords from mobile traffic
• Tracking dimensions over time in Google Analytics
• Tracking the impact of interactive TV

Here are the links to the topics we discuss:

• Best practices for creating custom alerts
• 4Q/Google Analytics survey integration
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Analytics Event Tracking Overview
• Obtaining the full referral url in Google Analytics
• Taking screenshots in OS X and Windows
• Migrating to Async Tracking
• Tracking Online impact of Offline campaigns

If you found this post helpful, we'd love to hear your comments, please share them via the comment form below.

If you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question and vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site. Avinash and I will answer your latest questions in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.

Thanks!

Posted By Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

Say your website has a check out lead generation process and you want to understand funnel abandonment by new vs. return visitors. You can do this through the Web Interface using many segments, filters and exporting data. But who has time for that?

Enter the free, shiny, new Conversion Tracking Application from PadiTrack. Built on the Google Analytics API, it’s all about insights and action. You simply register with the site, use secure oAuth to access your data, and you’re off, creating useful funnels like this - notice the black box with “415 new” denoting the number of new visitors in the funnel:

According to Claudiu, CoFounder of PadiCode, the company that built PadiTrack, "We wanted to make accessible conversion funnel tracking, one of the most important analytics reports, to any web business out there. It has always amazed us how many websites don't have conversion funnel tracking defined in their web analytics accounts. We were challenged by that reality. Since we've built PadiTrack, we've been using it daily for all of our projects. We love it. It saves time, offers instant insight and helps us focus on what really matters for us: how many people convert."

With PadiTrack you can almost instantly visualize the conversion funnel for any major event. It works for sales, sign-ups, downloads, contact inquiries and anything else you can think of. The setup takes 3 or 4 minutes, conversion funnels can be created on the fly and and you don't need to wait to gather data: it is available retroactively. The product is available to all Google Analytics users and to them only.

“We played with a couple of web analytics APIs so far but the Google Analytics one has been the most powerful. It gave us the power to work with data and pull out reports that we couldn't get otherwise. We spent much more time building the interface than getting the reports out of the Google Analytics. The API is really easy,” says Claudiu.

We’re really excited about what the PadiCode team has built and are featuring it in our App Gallery. Have a look and let the PadiCode team know what you think.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

Yay! It’s another episode of Web Analytics TV!

In this exciting series, with Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski, you ask, and vote on your favorite, web analytics questions via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them.

This episode was particularly awesome since there were some fantastic questions. Tough questions that made us think hard. But also questions that made us proud of how sophisticated Google Analytics users are.

In this action packed episode we discuss:

• Google Website Optimizer and the ga.js async tracking code issue
• What is considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII)?
• Teaching Google Analytics the location of your local __utm.gif image
• Implementing ecommerce tracking with multiple currencies
• Goal names in Google Analytics
• Similarities and differences between Visitors and Unique Visitors metrics
• Lovely opportunities for developers to build products using our API
• Reasons why utm_content values show up as (not set)
• Best practices for applying segments to specific pages (cool answer!)
• Implementing ecommerce tracking if you don’t have an order id
• Using advanced filters in the connection speed report
• Why the value “other” shows up in your reports
• Tracking how a visitor finds a site the first time for attribution
• Correlating business data with Google Analytics data

Here are the links to the topics we discuss:

• Setting the __utm.gif path using _setLocalGifPath
• How Mikael T. built a business using the Google Analytics API
• Troubleshooting the tracking code

As always, if you need help setting up Google Analytics or leveraging the advanced configuration options, we recommend hiring a Google Analytics Certified Partners.

If you found this post or video helpful, we'd love to hear your comments. Please share them via the comment form below.

If you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question and vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site. Avinash and I will answer your latest questions in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

Many developers have asked for a faster, more powerful way to access Google Analytics account configuration data through the Data Export API. We’ve listened and today we’re releasing a preview of the new Google Analytics Management API.

The Management API provides read-only access to Google Analytics configuration data. It consists of 5 new Google Data Feeds that map directly to the Google Analytics data model.

Previously, the API returned all the configuration data at once, which in many cases was inefficient if you only needed a subset of data. Now with separate feeds, developers can request only the data they need. For example, it’s now easy to get the Profile IDs for a single account or the Goal configuration data for only a single Profile.

To help you learn more we created a new Management API section in our developer documentation. We also created new reference examples in Java and have a live working demo in JavaScript. Check it out, no coding needed!

The Management API is being launched in Labs as an early preview. The API will change, grow, and get better over time. We recommend developers who aren’t committed to making updates to their applications only experiment with the new API and continue to use the Account Feed as their primary source for configuration data. We will strive to give you at least one month advanced notice of changes to this API.

The Management API represents a significant new piece of the Google Analytics developer platform. We encourage you to come try it out and give us feedback in our new Management API Google Group.

P.S. - Please make sure to sign-up for our notify list to stay up-to-date on all the latest Google Analytics Developer updates.

Thanks!
By Jeetendra M. Soneja, Google Analytics API Team